CB19 A Question of Belief (2010) by Donna Leon Page A

bring him only two, and drank the rest of the water.
    Looking around, Brunetti said, ‘Where does the bottle go?’
    ‘Over there by the door, sir. The blue bin.’
    Brunetti walked over to the plastic bins, put the bottle in the blue one and the paper bag and napkins in the yellow. ‘I see the hand of Signorina Elettra at work here,’ he said.
    Riverre laughed. ‘I thought she’d have to use force when she first told us about them, but we’re used to it by now.’ Then, as though revealing a truth he had been considering for some time, he said, ‘It’s really a shame she isn’t in charge here, isn’t it, sir?’
    ‘You mean the Questura?’ Brunetti asked. ‘The whole thing?’
    ‘Yes, sir. Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it?’
    Brunetti opened the second bottle of water and took a long drink. ‘My daughter has an Iranian classmate: sweet young girl,’ he said, confusing Riverre, who had perhaps expected a response to his question.
    ‘Whenever she wants to express happiness, the expression she uses is, “Much, much, too, very.” ’ He took another drink of water.
    ‘I’m not sure I follow you, sir,’ Riverre said, his words mirrored in his face.
    ‘It’s the only thing I can think of to say in response to the idea of Signorina Elettra taking over here: “Much, much, too, very.” ’ He twisted closed the bottle, thanked Riverre for his lunch, and went downstairs to ask Signorina Elettra to make the changes to Scarpa’s staffing plans.

7
    For the next few days, it appeared that some cosmic governing force had heard Brunetti’s wish that a deal be made with the forces of disorder, for crime went on holiday in Venice. The Romanians who played three card monte on the bridges appeared to have gone home on vacation, or else they had moved their work site to the beaches. The number of burglaries declined. Beggars, in response to a city ordinance banning them and subjecting them to severe penalties, disappeared for at least a day or two before going back to work. Pickpockets, of course, remained at their posts: they could go on vacation only in the empty months of November and February. Though the heat often drove people to violence, that was not the case this year. Perhaps there was some point where heat and humidity made the effort to throttle or maim too exhausting to be considered.
    Whatever the cause, Brunetti was glad of the lull. He used some of his free time to consult more sites that offered spiritual or other-worldly help to those in need of it. He hadread so widely in the Greek and Roman historians that he found nothing strange at all in the desire to consult the oracles or to find some way to decipher the messages of the gods. Whether it was the liver of a freshly killed chicken or the patterns made in the air by a flock of birds, the signs were there for those who could interpret them: all that was necessary was someone willing to believe the interpretation, and the deal was done. Cumae or Lourdes; Diana of Ephesus or the Virgin of Fatima: the mouth of the statue moved, and the truth came forth.
    The women of Brunetti’s family had told the rosary, and as a boy he had often returned home from school on a Friday afternoon to find them kneeling on the floor in the living room, reciting their incantations. The practice, and the faith that animated it, had seemed to him then, and still seemed to him now, two generations later, an ordinary and understandable part of human life. Thus, to transfer belief in the beneficent powers of the Madonna to belief in the power of a person to make contact with departed spirits seemed – at least to Brunetti – a very small step along the highway of faith.
    Never having dealt with a case that involved the misrepresentation of faith – if this, indeed, was what was at work in the strange behaviour of Vianello’s aunt – Brunetti was uncertain about the laws that operated. Italy was a country with a state religion; thus, the law tended to take