The Death of Faith (33 page)

‘Even Alvise?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Even Alvise,’ Vianello answered. ‘The fact that he’s stupid doesn’t stop him from being good-spirited.’

‘No,’ Brunetti answered immediately, ‘that seems to happen only in Parliament.’

Vianello laughed, pulled on his raincoat, and wished Brunetti good night.

Back in the room, Brunetti walked to within a metre of the bed and looked at the sleeping woman. Her cheeks had sunken in even more, and the only sign of life was the pale liquid which dripped slowly from a bottle suspended above her and into a tube which fed into her arm, that and the remorselessly slow rise and fall of her chest.

‘Maria?’ he called, and then, ‘Suor’Immacolata?’ Her breast continued to rise and fall, rise and fall, and the liquid continued to drip, but nothing else happened.

Brunetti switched on the overhead light, pulled his edition of
Marcus Aurelius
from his pocket, and began to read. At two, a nurse came in and took Maria’s pulse and entered it on the chart. ‘How is she?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Her pulse is quicker,’ the nurse said. ‘That sometimes happens when there’s going to be a change.’

‘You mean, that she’s going to wake up?’ he asked.

The nurse didn’t smile. ‘It can be that,’ she said and left the room before Brunetti had time to ask her what else it could be.

At three, he switched off the light and closed his eyes, but when his head fell forward on his chest, he forced himself to his feet and stood against the wall behind his chair. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

Sometime later, the door opened again, and a different nurse came into the darkened room. Like the one the previous night, she carried a covered tray. Saying nothing, Brunetti watched her as she made her way across the room until she stood beside the bed, just inside the pool of light cast by the bedside lamp. She reached up and moved the covers, and Brunetti, thinking it immodest to watch whatever it was she had been sent to do for the sleeping woman, lowered his eyes.

And saw the marks her shoes had left on the floor, each wet footprint carefully stamped out behind her. Even before he was conscious of what he was doing, Brunetti launched himself across the space between them, his right hand raised above his head. While still a few steps from her, he saw the towel that covered the tray fall to the floor and saw the long blade of the knife hidden under it. He screamed aloud, a wordless, meaningless noise, and saw the face of Signorina Lerini as she turned toward this form hurtling out of the darkness toward her.

The tray crashed to the floor and she turned toward Brunetti, knife slashing out in a purely instinctive arc. Brunetti tried to wheel away from it, but he was moving too fast and was carried within her reach. The blade slashed through the cloth of his left sleeve and across the muscles of his upper arm. His scream was deafening, and he repeated it again and again, hoping it would bring someone to the room.

One hand grasped to the cut, he turned toward her, afraid that she would come at him. But she had turned back to the woman who lay on the bed and, as he watched, she pulled the knife back level with her hip. Brunetti forced himself toward her again, pulling his hand away from the cut on his arm. Again, he screamed the same wordless sound, but she ignored him and took a step closer to Maria.

Brunetti made a fist with his right hand, raised it above his head, and slammed it down on her elbow, hoping to knock the knife to the ground. He felt, then heard, the shattering of bone but didn’t know if it was the bone of her arm or of his hand.

She turned then, arm limp at her side, knife still in her hand, and started to scream. ‘Antichrist. I must kill the Antichrist. God’s enemies shall be ground down into the dust and they shall be no more. His vengeance is mine. The servants of God shall not be harmed by the words of the Antichrist.’ Vainly she tried to raise her hand, but as he watched, her fingers loosened and the knife fell to the floor.

With one hand, he grabbed at the cloth of her sweater and pulled her savagely away from the bed. She offered him no resistance. He shoved her toward the door, which opened as he neared it, allowing a nurse and a doctor to push into the room.

‘What’s going on here?’ the doctor demanded, pausing at the door to switch on the overhead light.

‘Even the light of day shall not allow His enemies to hide from His just wrath,’ Signorina Lerini said in a voice made quick by passion. ‘His enemies shall be confounded and destroyed.’ She raised her left hand and pointed a shaking finger at Brunetti. ‘You think you can prevent God’s will from being obeyed. Fool. He is greater than all of us. His will shall be done.’

In the light that now filled the room, the doctor saw the blood that dripped from the man’s hand and the flecks of spittle that flew from the mouth of the woman. She spoke again, this time to the doctor and the nurse. ‘You’ve tried to harbour God’s enemy, given her succour and comfort, even though you knew she was the enemy of the Lord. But one greater than you has seen through all of your plans to defy the law of God, and he has sent me to administer God’s justice to the sinner.’

The doctor began to ask, ‘What’s going on . . .?’ but Brunetti silenced him with a wave of his hand.

He approached Signorina Lerini and placed his good hand gently on her arm. His voice became an insinuating murmur. ‘The ways of the Lord are many, my sister. Another shall be sent to take your place, and all His works shall be fulfilled.’

Signorina Lerini looked at him then, and he saw the dilated pupils and gasping mouth. ‘Are you too sent by the Lord?’ she asked.

‘Thou sayest it,’ Brunetti answered. ‘Sister in Christ, your former works will not go unrewarded,’ he prompted.

‘Sinners. They were both sinners and worthy of God’s punishment.’

‘Many say your father was a godless man, who mocked the Lord. God is patient and all-loving, but He will not be mocked.’

‘He died mocking God,’ she said, eyes suddenly filled with terror. ‘Even as I covered his face, he mocked God.’

Behind him, Brunetti heard the nurse and doctor whispering together. He turned his head toward them and commanded, ‘Quiet.’ Stunned by his voice and by the lunacy audible in the woman’s, they obeyed. He returned his attention to Signorina Lerini.

‘But it was necessary. It was God’s will,’ he prompted her.

Her face relaxed. ‘You understand?’

Brunetti nodded. The pain in his arm grew from minute to minute, and looking down, he saw the pool of blood beneath his hand. ‘And the money?’ he asked. ‘There is always great need of it in order to fight the enemies of the Lord.’

Her voice grew strong. ‘Yes. The battle is begun and must be waged until we have won back the kingdom of the Lord. The earnings of the godless must be given to do God’s holy work.’

He had no idea how long he could keep the nurse and doctor prisoner there, and so he risked saying, ‘The holy father has told me of your generosity.’

She greeted this revelation with a beatific smile. ‘Yes, he told me there was instant need. To wait could have taken years. God’s commands must be obeyed.’

He nodded, as if he found it perfectly understandable that a priest should have commanded her to murder her father. ‘And da Prè?’ Brunetti asked, casually, as though it were only a detail, like the colour of a scarf. ‘That sinner,’ he added, though it was hardly necessary.

‘He saw me, saw me that day I delivered God’s justice to my sinning father. But only later did he speak to me.’ She leaned toward Brunetti, nodding. ‘He was a sinful man, as well. Greed is a terrible sin.’

Behind him, he heard shuffling footsteps, and when he looked around, both the nurse and the doctor were gone. He heard running steps disappear down the corridor and, in the distance, raised voices.

He profited from the confusion of their noisy departure to turn his questions back to da Prè and asked, ‘And those others? The people there with your father. What were their sins?’

Before he could think of a way to clothe his questions in the rags of her lunacy, she turned puzzled, questioning eyes on him. ‘What?’ she asked. ‘What others?’

Brunetti realized that her confusion bespoke her innocence, so he ignored her questions and said, ‘And the little man? Da Prè? What did he do, Signorina? Did he threaten you?’

‘He asked for money I told him that I had merely done God’s will, but he said there was no God and no will. He blasphemed. He mocked the Lord.’

‘Did you tell the holy father?’

‘The holy father is a saint,’ she insisted.

‘He is truly a man of God,’ Brunetti agreed. ‘And did he tell you what to do?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘He told me God’s will and I hastened to perform it. Sin and sinners must be destroyed.’

‘Did he . . .?’ Brunetti began, but then three orderlies and the doctor came crashing into the room, filling it with noise and shouts, and she was lost to him.

In the aftermath, Signorina Lerini was taken to the psychiatric ward, where, after the bones in her elbow were set, she was heavily sedated and placed under twenty-four-hour guard. Brunetti was put in a wheelchair and taken to the emergency room, where he was given an injection against pain and had fourteen stitches in his arm. The head of the psychiatric unit, called to the hospital by the nurse who had witnessed the scene, forbade anyone to speak to Signorina Lerini, whose condition he diagnosed, without having seen or spoken to her, as ‘grave’. When Brunetti questioned them, neither the doctor nor the nurse who had heard his conversation with Signorina Lerini had any clear sense of it beyond a vague impression that it was filled with religious ravings. He asked if they could remember his asking Signorina Lerini about her father and da Prè, but they insisted that none of it had made any sense at all.

At quarter to six, Pucetti showed up at Maria Testa’s room and found no sign of Brunetti, though the Commissario’s raincoat was draped over a chair. When the officer saw the pool of blood on the floor, his first thought was for the safety of the woman. He moved quickly to the bed, and when he looked down, he was relieved to see that her chest was still moving as she breathed. But then, moving his eyes to her face, he saw that her eyes were open and she was staring up at him.

* * * *

Chapter Twenty-One

Brunetti learned nothing about the change in Maria Testa’s condition until almost eleven that morning and not until he arrived at the Questura, his wounded arm in a sling. Within minutes, Vianello came into his office.

‘She’s awake,’ he said with no introduction.

‘Maria Testa?’ Brunetti asked, though he knew.

‘Yes.’

‘What else?’

‘I don’t know. Pucetti phoned here at about seven and left the message, but I didn’t get it until a half hour ago. When I called your place, you had already left.’

‘How is she?’

‘I don’t know. All he said was that she was awake. When he told the doctors that she was, three of them went into her room and told him to leave. He thinks they were going to do tests. That’s when he called.’

‘Didn’t he say anything else?’

‘Nothing, sir.’

‘What about the Lerini woman?’

‘All we know is that she’s under sedation and can’t be seen.’ This was no more than Brunetti had known when he left the hospital.

‘Thanks, Vianello,’ he said.

‘Is there anything you want me to do, sir?’ Vianello asked.

‘No, not at the moment. I’ll go back to the hospital later.’ He shrugged off his raincoat and tossed it over a chair. Before Vianello left, Brunetti asked, ‘The Vice-Questore?’

‘I don’t know, sir. He’s been in his office since he got in. He didn’t get in until ten, so I doubt that he learned about any of this before then.’