The Age of Doubt by Andrea Camilleri Page A

for barely three months, and hadn’t had time yet to make any friends. This was the first time since moving to Vigàta that she was eating with a man.
    Montalbano, for his part, talked at length about Livia. Laura even managed to eat the nervetti. She had a discerning palate.
    “Would you like some coffee, or a whisky?” he asked when they were done.
    “Actually, do you have any more of this wine?”

    “Have you managed to identify the dead body?” Laura asked at a certain point.
    “No, not yet. I think it’s going to take a while, and it won’t be easy.”
    “I heard he died from getting his face smashed in.”
    “No, they did that to him afterwards. He was poisoned.”
    “So . . .” she began.
    Then she stopped.
    “No, never mind,” she continued. “I had this idea, but it’s too silly to mention it to you . . . I’ve heard about you, you know. They say you’re not only good, but exceptional in your field.”
    Montalbano blushed. And she dropped another string of pearls.
    “That’s fantastic! A man still capable of blushing!”
    “Come on, stop it. Tell me your idea.”
    “I thought it might have been something like a robbery gone wrong. The man could have been mugged while strolling along the jetty. And when he tried to defend himself, the attacker picked up a stone and beat him to death. So he put him in a dinghy . . . There are so many docked around there . . . Have you checked to see who the dinghy belongs to?”
    By some miracle Montalbano managed not to blush again. He hadn’t thought of this. When, in fact, it should have been his first concern. His brain was misfiring, no question.
    “No, because Forensics believes the dinghy had never been used before they put the body in it.”
    Laura screwed up her face.
    “Well, I would do a little check just the same.”
    Better change the subject or risk looking bad.
    “Maybe you can answer a question for me. As far as you know, are there a lot of rich people who stay out at sea all year long, going from port to port and doing nothing else?”
    “Are you referring to Livia Giovannini?”
    “Do you know her?”
    “The
Vanna
called at port here three days after I started working in Vigàta. There was a bureaucratic matter that had to be settled, and so I went aboard. That’s how we met. They were coming from Tangiers, but they had left some months before that from Alexanderbaai.”
    Montalbano balked.
    “Where’s that?”
    “It’s a small port in South Africa.”
    “And where were they coming from this time?”
    “From Rethymno.”
    “And where’s that?”
    “In Crete. They were supposed to be going to Oran, but bad weather forced them to change course.”
    The inspector seemed astonished.
    “Are you surprised?”
    “Well, yes. It’s not that the
Vanna
is a small craft, but still . . .”
    “Actually, it’s one of the finest yachts in all the world, you know. On top of that, Livia’s husband had all the equipment and motors customized.”
    “Sperlì said they have an auxiliary motor that doesn’t work very well.”
    “Come on! I think they only use the sails for decoration. That boat is an eighty-five-foot sea serpent that originally had twenty-four sleeping berths. The cabins were later expanded and modified, so that now there are barely half a dozen beds, but in exchange they gained a great deal of space and another sitting room.”
    “That big motorboat looks pretty serious too.”
    “You mean the
Ace of Hearts
? It measures a good sixty feet and change and has two powerful GM engines and nine sleeping berths. It can go wherever it wants.”
    “I see you know about these things.”
    “It’s just a personal interest, for fun.”
    “Listen, to get back to what we were saying, I asked you if there are a lot of rich people who—”
    “—spend their lives at sea? I don’t think so.”
    “So how else do you explain it?”
    “I have no explanation for it. It may just be some mania of hers. Her husband had