On the dais, on the floor of the old chamber, stood a small, lachrymose man who worked for the Italian Department of Justice. He was a midlevel official of no particular distinction but of no particular loyalties either, and for this reason he had been assigned special investigator in the case.

“This committee shall come to order,” said the special investigator. No one seemed to be paying attention.

The special investigator didn’t have a mellifluous voice, nor was he pleasant to look at. He resembled the sort of slump-shouldered man who might stand too close behind you on the bus. Below him, on the floor, the press inhabited its own area, with mongers from all the important outlets. A small group of special witnesses were gathered in a nearby box. These included Cardinal Whiting and my ex-landlady, a small woman dressed in polka dots.

I wondered why she was here.

The special investigator didn’t yet turn his attention to me but suffered the audience with various matters of protocol. Then—without explanation or transition—he began to read, in his dry shion, a letter of petition from Isabella’s banished bodyguard.

I felt a chill.

I remembered Ernesto Lodovico: his raked hair, the odd twist of his smile, and how he’d behaved toward me that night when I’d gotten myself lost in the streets below the Palazzo. Lodovico had fled the country and was under extradition back to Italy, facing charges in the case of a former employer, the cabinet minister who’d been stabbed to death in his pajamas.

Lodovico’s letter claimed the charges against him had been arranged through a corrupt judge in the Florentine district. The letter petitioned the committee to examine the mechanism of this corruption and dismiss the charges. Furthermore, the letter insisted, the timing of Lodovico’s dismissal as Isabella’s bodyguard was by no means accidental but had been deliberately arranged so that she would be vulnerable and alone. He would testify to all this if given immunity.

The committee debated how to react to the letter but in the end tabled the matter, as they tabled everything. I told myself not to think about this, that the reading of the letter was just another part of the spectacle.

––––––––