The Potter's Field

Montalbano was watching her. She hadn’t lost color, and showed no surprise or agitation at the news. The only outward sign was a deep, straight furrow cutting horizontally across her brow. She waited until the two men had finished their coffee before she spoke.

“You’re not joking, are you?”

No drama in her tone, no cracking in her voice from pent-up tears. A simple, flat question.

“No, unfortunately,” said Montalbano.

“What do you think could have happened to him?” she asked in the same tone, as if she were talking about someone without the slightest connection to her.

Sugar doll? She was a woman of marble and steel, was Signora Dolores! A contradictory woman, though: able to control herself, as she was at this moment, but also liable to abandon herself to acts of passion, as when she scratched his arm.

“Well, the most likely scenario is a voluntary disappearance.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because Mr. Camera told me that a few days after not showing up for boarding, your husband sent him a note saying he’d found a better offer.”

“But that could be a forgery, like the postcard I received the other day,” Dolores replied readily.

Intelligent woman, no doubt about it, whose brain still functioned in spite of the blow she’d just received.

“That’s precisely why I would like to get my hands on that note, provided Camera still has it.”

“Why don’t you try?”

“Before I can make any moves, I need a formal missing persons declaration from you.”

“All right, then, I’ll do that. Should I come with you?”

“There’s no need. Fazio can take down your declaration right here, after I leave. I would, however, like to ask you a few more things.”

“So would I.”

“All right, then, after you.”

“But first, please, if you have other questions to ask me, come sit on the sofa beside me. I can’t . . .”

For a millionth of a second, Fazio’s and Montalbano’s eyes met. Then Montalbano did as asked.

“Is that better?” he said, settling in.

“Yes, thank you.”

“Have you got a recent photo of your husband?”

“As many as you like. There are even some we took a few days before he left. I’d gone along with him to say goodbye to a distant relative of his . . .”

“All right, you can show me them later, and I’ll select one to take with me. But now I have to ask you something I already asked you yesterday, which I’m sure will be unpleasant for you. I’m sorry, but...”

Dolores raised a hand and placed it on Montalbano’s knee. It was hot and trembling ever so slightly. Apparently only now was what the inspector had told her beginning to sink in. And it was becoming harder for her to control herself.

“From the letter you kindly showed me yesterday, it was clear that your relationship with your husband was very . . . well, very intense. Would you say that’s true?”

Fazio suddenly leaned forward, closer to the notebook on his leg, and pretended to take notes.

“Yes. Very intense,” said Dolores.

“And, during your husband’s last stay here, would you say—and I want you to think this over very carefully—would you say that this . . . this intensity had perhaps diminished a little? Was there maybe a cooling, however minor, that might . . . What I mean is, was anything at all different from the other times he...”

She squeezed his knee tight. And the heat of her hand traveled straight as an arrow from that point and up his thigh just enough to reach a rather delicate spot in the inspector’s anatomy. He gave a start, barely able to contain himself.

“Something was very different,” she said so softly that Fazio had to lean forward to hear her.

“But the last time we spoke, you said the opposite,” the inspector was quick to point out.

“Well . . . because Giovanni was . . . different . . . which isn’t really the right word, not in the sense that you think...”

“How, then?”

But why didn’t she take her goddamn hand off his knee?

“In fact, he had become . . . it was like he was starving. Nothing was ever enough. Two or three times, when we had just finished eating, he couldn’t even wait for me to get to the bedroom . . . And he would ask me to do things which before . . .”

Having become suddenly nearsighted, Fazio raised his notebook directly in front of his eyes, to hide his blushing face. The palm of Dolores’s hand, for its part, had started sweating at the memory of those recent connubial exploits, to the point that Montalbano could feel the dampness through the fabric of his trousers.

“Perhaps if I give you a few details, you’ll better understand the degree—”

“No! No details!” Montalbano nearly yelled, suddenly standing up.

He couldn’t stand it any longer. That hand was driving him out of his wits.

She looked at him as if baffled. Was it possible she had no idea of the effect her hand and voice had on a man?

“All right, signora,” Montalbano continued. “Let’s consider this chapter closed. Tell me, does your husband have any enemies?”