‘And thus the fiction of my appetite?’ he could not prevent himself from asking.

Did she hesitate an instant? Regardless, she repeated, tugging his arm and smiling at him, ‘Yes. Thus the fiction of your appetite.’

Had Brunetti not warmed to Franca Marinello because of their conversation, he might have remarked that she hardly needed dietary peculiarities to draw attention to herself. But Cicero had intervened to change Brunetti’s opinion and he had come, he realized, to feel protective of the woman.

They passed in front of Goldoni’s house, then the sudden left and right and down towards San Polo. As they walked out into the campo, Paola stopped and gazed across the open space. ‘How strange to see it empty like this.’

He loved the campo, had loved it since he was a boy, for its trees and its sense of openness: SS Giovanni e Paolo was too small, the statue in the way, and soccer balls were prone to end in the canal; Santa Margherita was oddly shaped, and he’d always found it too noisy, even more so now that it had become so fashionable. Perhaps it was the lack of commercialization that made him love Campo San Polo, for only two sides of it held shops, the others having resisted the lure of Mammon. The church, of course, had succumbed and now charged people to enter, having discovered that beauty brought more income than grace. Not that there was all that much to see inside: a few Tintorettos, those Tiepolo Stations of the Cross, a bit of this and that.

He felt Paola tugging at his arm. ‘Come on, Guido, it’s almost one.’

He accepted the truce her words offered, and they made their way home.

Unusually, his father-in-law phoned Brunetti at the Questura the next day. After thanking him for the dinner, Brunetti waited to see what was on the Conte’s mind.