Chapters 5-7 Summary

In Chapter 5, Brunetti walks home to his apartment, which was illegally built by the previous owner. His wife Paola greets him and makes him tea. He tells her about the murder, and she realizes it will be an unwelcome sensation in the press, with pressure from above to solve the case quickly. Paola makes a guess that the killer is the maestro's wife, who is thirty years younger than her dead husband. She makes a habit of always guessing the most obvious suspect, claiming that her dissertation on the un-obvious Henry James gives her the right to look for the obvious in real life.

In Chapter 6, Brunetti arrives at his office the next morning to find his haughty superior, Vice-Questore Guiseppe Patta in the office, asking for him. Brunetti has no respect for Patta, who seems a poor policeman with a...