The widow appeared. Marta Valent was an attractive woman whose entrance filled the room with a quiet anguish. She shook their hands loosely, as if wanting to slip away, and accepted their stock remarks with downcast eyes. She joined Teresa on the couch but chose to perch on the opposite end, teetering on the edge of the cushion. Teresa noticed that her beauty was somewhat anonymous, a combination of regular features and fading colors; a blemish or a quirk of nature would have made her seem more interesting, but as it was, there was nothing to report. The lines of her unremarkable figure, with its long, slender bones, were traced by clothes worn with a certain weariness, as if they weighed too much. But a photograph on one of the bookshelves showed a woman with more flesh on her bones, and light in her eyes. It wasn’t an old photograph either, and Teresa wondered if perhaps she had recently suffered an illness.

Valent’s mother arrived carrying a tray, its tinkling breaking the silence that had followed the initial exchange of pleasantries. The aroma of coffee seeped through the room; the old woman handed a steaming cup each to Teresa and Marini, but her daughter-in-law’s remained on the tray, untouched.

“Nobody had anything against Roberto. He didn’t have any enemies,” their hostess said abruptly.

Teresa drained her coffee before replying.

“Well, he must have had at least the one,” she said.

“Whoever did that . . . whoever did that to him is no enemy, but a psychopath.”

“Why not both?”

Marta Valent started like a snail recoiling from a foreign touch. Teresa read the sudden movement as an indication that directness was not a welcome trait in this woman’s world, and she found herself wishing she’d been a bit more sympathetic. Marta Valent was, at least for now, a victim who’d just suffered the violent loss of her partner, the father of her son.

“What was your husband like that morning, and in the days before?” Teresa asked in a softer tone, returning to routine questions.

“Just as usual: distant.”

Teresa was surprised. She noticed a redness on the woman’s ring finger, as if she’d been picking at it, twisting her wedding band around and around.

“Distant?” she repeated.

“Sorry, I meant drained. He worked too hard, that’s what we all thought.”

“Did he usually drop your son off at school?”

The woman lowered her eyes to the fabric of her skirt, which she had been smoothing with tremulous fingers ever since she’d sat down.

“No, I usually do that,” she replied. “But I was ill that day. I suffer from terrible migraines. Roberto had left his phone at home, but I knew he’d be back for it; he can’t cope without it.”

“Because of work?”

Her eyes darted up to look at Teresa. Something inside her had been ignited.