And it had happened then, in the half-second between the time Claudio finished securing the package and the moment when he inserted it on the top shelf of the safe. Had one of them asked him a question, pulled out a cigarette case? Later, when he discovered the substitution, Claudio could not remember anything about that crucial moment when the two cases had been switched. He realized what had happened only two days later, when the men did not come back to pay him and collect their stones. Later, he said he knew already when he opened the safe and took the case, knew it though he could never believe that it was possible, that they could have managed to switch the cases, not with him there, not with him paying attention. But they had.
He had made Brunetti, after telling him how much the stones were worth, promise to tell no one: he knew he would not be able to endure the shame, were his wife to learn how great had been his carelessness, nor could he bear hers if she learned that the men she had so proudly spoken to about her husband one day on the train were the very men who had come back to cheat him.
That the men were subsequently arrested and jailed made no difference to Claudio, for the money had long since been lost in the casinos of Europe, and his insurance company had declared the claim unpayable because he had not submitted to them, when he applied for his policy, a complete list of the stones in his possession, their origin, price, weight, and cut. That Claudio was a wholesaler and thus had thousands of stones and would have had to spend months preparing the inventory was judged irrelevant in their decision to disallow the claim.
This stew of memories filled Brunetti’s mind as Claudio led him down the corridor towards his office. ‘Can’t I offer you something to drink, Guido?’ the old man asked as they entered the office.
‘No, nothing, Claudio. I just had a coffee. Perhaps when we’re finished.’ From long experience, he knew that Claudio would not take his place behind the desk until his guest was seated, so Brunetti pulled out a chair and sat, placing his briefcase between his feet.
Claudio walked behind the desk and sat. He folded his hands and leaned forward in a familiar gesture. ‘Paola and the kids?’ he asked.
‘Fine. Everyone,’ Brunetti said, part of the familiar ritual. ‘They’re all doing well at school. Even Paola,’ he added with a laugh. Then he asked, ‘And Elsa?’
Claudio tilted his head to one side and grimaced. ‘The arthritis is getting worse. It’s in her hands now. But she never complains. Someone told us about a doctor in Padova, and she’s been going to him for a month. He’s giving her some medicine from America, and it seems to help.’
‘Let’s hope it does,’ Brunetti said. ‘And Riccardo?’
‘Happy, working, and going to make me a grandfather for the third time in June.’
‘He or Evvie?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Together, I think,’ Claudio said.
Formalities disposed of, Claudio asked, ‘What is it you wanted to see me about?’ From force of habit, he wasted no time, even though life had slowed for him in the last few years, and he found himself with so much time that he would like to be able to waste some.
‘I’ve found some stones,’ Brunetti said. ‘And I’d like you to tell me whatever you can about them.’
‘What kind of stones?’ Claudio asked.
‘Let me show you,’ Brunetti said and reached for his briefcase. He opened it, pulled out the plastic bag that contained Vianello’s two mittens, and set it on the desk. Then he removed his handkerchief and placed it next to the bag. He glanced across at Claudio and saw both confusion and interest.
He started with the handkerchief, pulling at the first knot with his fingernails and then, when that was untied, the second. He let the corners fall to the surface of the desk and pushed the handkerchief closer to Claudio. Then he opened the plastic bag, removed the mittens and poured their contents on to the pile at the centre of the handkerchief. A few wayward stones rolled free across the surface of the desk; Brunetti picked them up and placed them on the pile, saying, ‘I’d like you to tell me about these.’
Claudio, who had probably seen more precious stones in his life than anyone else in the city, looked at them soberly, making no motion towards them. After more than a minute had passed, he licked the tip of his forefinger and placed it on one of the small pieces, picked it up and licked it. ‘Why are they mixed with salt?’ he asked.
‘They were hidden in a box of it,’ Brunetti explained.
Claudio nodded, approving of the idea.
‘Do you need them?’ he asked Brunetti.
‘Need them how? As evidence?’
‘No. Need them now, to keep with you, to take back with you.’
‘No,’ Brunetti, who had not thought of this, answered. ‘I don’t think so. Why? What do you want to do with them?’
‘First, I have to put them in hot water for half an hour or so and get rid of the salt,’ Claudio said. ‘That will make it easier to see how many there are and how much they weigh.’
‘Weigh?’ Brunetti asked, ‘as in grams and kilos?’
Returning his attention to the stones, Claudio said, ‘They’re not measured in kilos: you should know at least that much, Guido.’ There was no reproach in his voice, nor disappointment.
‘When you do that,’ Brunetti said, ‘will you be able to tell me what they’re worth? Or where they come from?’
Claudio pulled his own handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket and wiped his forefinger clean with it. Then, using the same finger, he poked and prodded at the pile, smoothing out the hill Brunetti had created and moving the stones around until there was one level surface. He switched on a segmented desk lamp and angled the head until the light fell on the area directly in front of him. He opened the centre drawer in his desk and took out a pair of jeweller’s tweezers. With them, he selected three of the bigger stones, each slightly smaller than a pea, and set them on the desk in front of him. Idly, not bothering to look at Brunetti, he said, ‘The first thing I can tell you is that someone has selected these stones carefully.’ To Brunetti, they still looked like pebbles, but he said nothing.
From the same drawer Claudio took a jeweller’s loupe and a set of balance scales, then pulled out a small box. When he opened it, Brunetti saw a series of tiny cylindrical brass weights. Claudio looked down at the things on his desk, shook his head, and smiled at Brunetti, saying, ‘Force of habit, these scales.’ He opened a side drawer and pulled out a small electronic scale and switched it on. As the light flashed, revealing a window in which a large zero could be seen, he said, ‘This is faster and more accurate.’
Using the tweezers, he picked up one of the stones he had set aside. He placed the stone on the scale, turned it so that he could read the weight, added the second stone, and then the third. He reached into the drawer again and pulled out a black velvet pad about half the size of a magazine, which he placed to the left of the scale. With the tweezers, he set the three stones on the pad. He picked up the loupe and, as Brunetti watched the crown of his head move from left to right, examined the three stones in turn.
He set the loupe on the desk and looked across at Brunetti. ‘Are they African?’ Claudio asked.
‘I think so.’
The older man nodded in evident satisfaction. He picked up the tweezers and gently poked at the pile, pushing stones to one side or another until three more, each larger than the first three, lay in the middle of the small circles he had created. Claudio picked them up with the tweezers and set them on the velvet cloth, to the left of the others; with the loupe, he examined each of them thoroughly.
When he was finished, he removed the loupe and set it beside the handkerchief, then lined up the long tweezers parallel to the border of the smoothed-out cloth. ‘I won’t know for sure until tomorrow, when I can count them and weigh them, but I’d say you’ve somehow managed to acquire a fortune, Guido.’
Ignoring the verb and the question implicit in it, Brunetti asked, ‘How much of a fortune?’
‘It will depend on how much salt there is and whether the smaller ones are as good as I think those ones are,’ the jeweller said, pointing at the six stones he had examined.
‘If they aren’t cut, how can you tell what they’re worth?’ Brunetti asked. ‘They don’t have any — what do you call them? — facets.’
‘The facets come later, Guido. You can’t add them to a stone that isn’t perfect. Or, that is, you can add them, but only a perfect stone is going to give you the right lustre when you add the facets.’ He waved his hand at the pile of stones. ‘I’ve looked at only six of them. You saw that. But those look to me as though they might be perfect; well, at the very least of excellent quality. I can’t be sure, of course, that they’re perfect in nature or that they’ll be perfect when they’re cut and polished, but I think they might be.’ He glanced at the wall behind Brunetti for a second, then looked back at him and pointed at the stones. ‘It will be in the hands of the cutter. To bring out what’s there.’
As if suddenly eager to examine them again, Claudio picked up the loupe and screwed it back in place. He leaned over and again studied all six stones, working from left to right. At one point he took the tweezers and turned one of the stones over, then looked at it from this new angle. When he was done, he removed the loupe and placed it back exactly where it had been. He nodded, as if assenting to a question from Brunetti. ‘I don’t know when I’ve last seen such things.’ With the tweezers he touched a few of the stones lying in the pile, though there was nothing at all special about them, so far as Brunetti could see.
‘Could you give me some idea of what they’d be worth, no matter how vague?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Just look at them,’ Claudio said, his eyes aglow with what Brunetti recognized as passion. Then, sensing the urgency in his friend’s voice, the old man brought himself back to the world where diamonds had value, not just beauty. ‘When the big ones are cut and polished, each one could be worth thirty, perhaps forty, thousand Euros, but the price will depend on how much is lost when they’re cut.’ Claudio picked up one of the raw stones and held it towards Brunetti. ‘If there are perfect stones to be had from these, they’re worth a fortune.’
Then what had they been doing, Brunetti wondered, in a room with no heat, no water, and no insulation? And what were they doing in the possession of a man who earned his living by selling counterfeit bags and wallets on the street?
‘How can you tell they’re African?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I can’t,’ Claudio admitted. ‘That is, not for sure. But they look as though they might be.’
‘What tells you that?’ Brunetti wanted to know.
Claudio considered the question, no doubt one he had heard before. ‘Something about the colour and light in them or off them. And the absence of the flecks and imperfections that you find in diamonds from other places.’ Claudio looked at Brunetti, then back at the stones. ‘To tell the truth,’ he finally said, ‘I probably can’t tell you why, at least not fully. After you’ve looked at thousands of stones, hundreds of thousands of stones, you just know — or at least you think you know — where they’re from.’
‘Is that how many you’ve looked at, Claudio?’
The old man sat up straighter, though the action made him no taller in his chair. He folded his hands in that professorial gesture and said, ‘I’ve never thought about that, Guido — it was just a phrase — but I suppose I have. Tiny sixteenth of a carat stones filled with imperfections, and some glorious ones that weighed more than thirty, forty carats, so perfect it was like looking at new suns.’ He paused, as though listening to what he had just said. Then he smiled and added, ‘I suppose it’s like women. It doesn’t matter what they look like, not really: there’s always something beautiful about them.’
Brunetti, in full agreement, grinned at the simile. ‘Is there any way you could be sure where they’re from?’ he asked.
Claudio considered this and finally said, ‘The best I can do is show a few of them to friends of mine and see what they think. If we all agree. . well, then either they’re from Africa or else we’re all wrong.’
‘Can you tell where, specifically? That is, what country?’
‘Diamonds don’t acknowledge countries, Guido. They come from pipes, and pipes don’t have passports.’
‘Pipes?’
‘In the ground. Deep craters that are more like thin, deep wells than anything else. The diamonds were formed down there — kilometres down — millions of years ago, and over the years, they gradually work their way up to the surface.’ Claudio relaxed into the graceful authority of the expert, and Brunetti listened, interested. ‘They come in clusters, some pipes, or they can be single ones. But it’s possible that the clusters can cross what are now national borders and fall into the territories of two countries.’
‘What happens then?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Then the stronger side tries to take them from the weaker.’
As he had learned from his reading of history, Brunetti knew this was the normal operating procedure for most international disputes. ‘Is this the case in Africa?’
‘Unfortunately, yes,’ Claudio said. ‘It gives those poor people another reason for violence.’
‘Hardly necessary, is it?’ Brunetti asked.
The sombre topic halted the flood of Claudio’s garrulity, and he said, ‘You can come and get them tomorrow.’ Then, as a joke, he added, ‘If you think I can be trusted with them, that is.’
Brunetti leaned forward and placed his hand on Claudio’s arm. ‘I’d like you to keep them, if you will,’ he said.
‘For how long?’
Brunetti shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. Until I’ve decided what to do with them.’
‘Is this police evidence?’ Claudio asked, but he seemed interested in clarity, not security.
‘In a way,’ Brunetti said evasively.
‘Does someone else know you have them?’ Claudio asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Thank God,’ the old man said.
‘What difference would that make?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Then I’m less likely to steal them,’ Claudio said and got to his feet.
14
On his way back to the Questura, Brunetti pondered what Claudio had told him. Because it was all new to him, the older man’s talk of diamonds had seemed important, but the part that applied or might apply to the African, upon closer examination, was precious little: some vast amount of Euros and a probable African origin for the stones. It was certainly interesting to know these things, but Brunetti could not see how the knowledge brought him any closer to understanding the connection between the stones and the dead man or between the stones and the man’s death. Greed was one of the most reliable motives for crime, but if the man’s killers had known about the stones, why had they not gone and taken them after he was dead? And if what they wanted was the stones, then why kill the man at all? It was hardly as though the police were likely to believe a vu cumprà who came into the Questura to report that he had been robbed of a fortune in diamonds.
As he walked back, Brunetti decided that the best strategy was to speak immediately to his superior, Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta, and seek his permission to continue to lead the investigation, though in order to achieve this, he would somehow have to persuade Patta that he did not particularly want the job. He went directly to Patta’s office, outside which he found the man he sought in conversation with Signorina Elettra.
As if someone had whispered the word ‘diamonds’ into the ears of the staff of the Questura as they were dressing for work that morning, Patta wore a new and unusually garish tie-pin, a tiny gold panda with diamond eyes. Signorina Elettra, as though alerted by a sartorial advance warning system, wore a pair of tasteful diamond chip earrings which diminished, though they could not overcome, the impact of Patta’s panda.
With an air of studied casualness, Brunetti greeted them both and asked Signorina Elettra if she had succeeded in locating that Gazzettino article about the former director of the Casinò. Though this was a question Brunetti had invented on the spot to justify his arrival in the office, Signorina Elettra said she had and reached across her desk to hand him a folder.
‘What are you working on at the moment, Brunetti?’ Patta inquired.
Holding up the file, Brunetti said, ‘The Casinò investigation, sir,’ in much the same tone Hercules might have used had he been asked why he was spending so much time in the stables.
Patta turned towards his office. ‘Come with me,’ he said. The remark could have been addressed to either one of them, but the absence of ‘please’ indicated that it was directed at Brunetti.
An Iranian friend had once told Brunetti that underlings there acknowledged the commands of their superiors with a word that sounded like ‘chasham’, a Farsi word meaning ‘I shall put it on my eyes’, which conveyed that the person of lesser importance placed the command of his superior upon his eyes and would do — indeed, see — nothing until the command had been executed. Brunetti often regretted the absence of a similarly servile expression in Italian.
Inside, Patta went to stand at the window, thus preventing Brunetti from taking a seat. He stood just inside the door and waited for Patta to speak. The Vice-Questore stared out of the window for a long time, so long that Brunetti began to wonder if Patta had forgotten about him. He cleared his throat, but the noise evoked no response in Patta.
Just when Brunetti was on the point of speaking, Patta turned from the window and asked, ‘They called you the other night, didn’t they?’
‘About the African, do you mean, sir?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Yes.’
Brunetti nodded.
‘At home?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Excuse me, sir?’
‘Why did they call you?’
‘I’m not sure I understand, sir. I suppose they called me because I live closest, or perhaps someone here suggested they call me. I really don’t know why.’
‘They didn’t call me,’ Patta said, not without a note of petulance.
After considering what might be the safest answer, Brunetti said, ‘I imagine they simply called whatever name came to mind. Or, for all I know, there’s a list, and they call us at home in turn when it’s necessary for someone to attend the scene of a crime.’ Patta turned back to the window and Brunetti added, ‘Besides, sir, they probably didn’t want to burden someone so senior with the opening stages of an investigation.’ He did not mention that it was precisely those stages which often proved most important in solving a case.
When Patta still did not speak, he added, ‘After all, sir, your skills surely lie in deciding who is best suited to investigate a particular case.’ Brunetti realized how close to the wind he was sailing and decided to say nothing more.
After another long pause, Patta asked, ‘And do you think you’re particularly well suited to this case?’
Brunetti counted to five, very slowly, before he said, ‘No, not particularly.’
As soon as he spoke, Patta was upon him. ‘Does that mean you don’t want it?’
This time Brunetti made it to seven before he answered, ‘I don’t want it and I don’t not want it equally, sir,’ he lied. ‘I am of the opinion that it will turn out to be some story of rivalry between different gangs of blacks and we’ll end up questioning dozens of them, who will all say they have no idea who the man was or who he could have been. And in the end, we’ll learn nothing and just close the case and send it to the archives.’ He tried to sound both disapproving and bored at the same time. When Patta remained silent, Brunetti asked, ‘Is that what you wanted to see me about, sir?’
Patta turned back to him and said, ‘I think you’d better take a seat, Brunetti.’
Suppressing any sign of surprise, Brunetti did as he was told. His superior chose not to move away from the window. Clouds were gathering, and the light was rapidly dimming. Patta’s face had grown less visible since they entered the room, and Brunetti found himself wishing he dared go over and turn the light on, the better to illuminate his superior’s expression.
Finally Patta said, ‘I find your lack of interest unusual, Brunetti.’
Brunetti began to speak, decided to show reluctance, and so waited a few seconds before he said, ‘I suppose it is, sir. But I’m busy at the moment, and I have a feeling that any investigation here will prove futile.’ He glanced at Patta, saw from his stillness how attentive he was, and went on. ‘From the little I’ve heard about the vu cumprà, I’d say they live in a closed world, and there’s no way we can get into it.’ He tried to think of an appropriate comparison, and the best he could come up with was, ‘Like the Chinese.’
‘What?’ Patta demanded sharply. ‘What did you say?’
Startled by his tone, Brunetti said, ‘That they’re like the Chinese here, sir, in that they’re a closed world, a private universe, and we have no understanding of the relationships and rules that operate there, in either case.’
‘But why did you mention the Chinese?’ Patta asked in a calmer voice.
Brunetti shrugged. ‘Because they’re the only other large group I can think of here. Ethnic group, that is.’
‘The Filipinos? The people from Eastern Europe?’ Patta asked. ‘Aren’t they ethnic groups?’
Brunetti thought about this before he answered, ‘I suppose so.’ Then he added, ‘But if I have to tell the truth, it’s because they’re so racially different from us, the Africans and the Chinese, that I lump them together. Maybe that makes them seem more alien, somehow.’ When Patta made no response, he asked, ‘Why do you ask, sir?’
At that, Patta moved away from the window. He did not, however, sit down behind his desk but chose to take a chair opposite Brunetti, a decision that filled Brunetti with a strange disquiet.
‘We don’t trust one another, do we, Brunetti?’ Patta finally asked.
Ordinarily, Brunetti would lie about this and insist that they were both policemen and so it was obvious that they had to trust one another if they were to work together in the best interests of the force, but something warned him that Patta was in no mood for such nonsense, and so he said, ‘No, we don’t.’
Patta considered his answer, glanced at the floor, then back again at Brunetti. At last he said, ‘I want to tell you something that I will not explain, but I want you to trust me when I tell you it’s true.’
Instantly Brunetti thought of a conundrum proposed by his professor of logic: if a person who always lies tells you he is lying, is he telling you the truth or is he lying? Years had passed and he could no longer remember the correct answer, but Patta’s remarks sounded suspiciously similar. He remained silent.
‘We have to leave this alone,’ Patta finally said.
When it was obvious that he was going to say no more, Brunetti asked, ‘I assume this means the murder of the black man?’
Patta nodded.
‘Leave it alone how? Not investigate it or only look like we are, and find nothing?’
‘We can look like we are. That is, we can question people and make reports. But we are not to find anything.’
‘Anything like what?’ Brunetti asked.
Patta shook his head. ‘That’s all I have to say on this matter, Brunetti.’
‘You mean we’re not to find the men who killed him?’ Brunetti asked in a hard voice.
‘I mean only what I said, Brunetti, that we are to leave this alone.’
Brunetti’s impulse was to shout at Patta, but he suppressed it and, instead, asked in a voice he managed to keep calm, ‘Why are you telling me this?’
Patta’s was just as calm as he answered, ‘To spare you trouble, if I can.’ Then, as if provoked to the truth by Brunetti’s silence, he added, ‘To spare us all trouble.’
Brunetti got to his feet. ‘I appreciate the warning, sir,’ he said and walked to the door. He waited there for a moment, curious to see if Patta would ask if he understood and would obey, but the Vice-Questore said nothing more. Brunetti left, careful to shut the door quietly.
Signorina Elettra looked up eagerly as he emerged and started to speak, but Brunetti did nothing more than slide the empty folder back on to her desk. He put his forefinger to his lips and then gestured that he was going back upstairs.
As a kind of insurance that he would not give in to Patta, Brunetti called Paola and described the wooden head, asking her to add it to the information to give to her friend at the university and encouraging her to make the call. Then he opened his mind to possibility. The fact that the Vice-Questore should warn him off an investigation meant that he had himself been warned off, and that raised the question of who would deliver such a warning. And from whom would a warning carry sufficient force to persuade him within less than a day? Patta respected wealth and power, though Brunetti was never sure which meant more to him. Patta would always defer to money, but it was power that could compel his obedience, so the admonition must come from some source powerful enough to force Patta into submission.
Patta had hinted that his warning arose from concern for Brunetti’s safety, a possibility which Brunetti dismissed out of hand. Its origin was more likely to be found in Patta’s fear that Brunetti could not or would not be prevented from continuing the investigation once he began it, even if commanded to do so. The cunning of the snake became evident in Patta’s seeming concern, as if his main priority were Brunetti’s safety and not his own.
The source of a power so great as to force compliance from a Vice-Questore of police? Brunetti closed his eyes and began to run over the rosary beads of possibility. The obvious candidates fell into the general categories of governmental, ecclesiastical, and criminal; the great tragedy of his country, Brunetti mused, was how equal they were as contenders.
15
Signorina Elettra’s arrival interrupted these reflections. She knocked and came in without waiting to be told to do so, approached his desk, and all but demanded, ‘What did he want?’ Then, as if aware of the effrontery of her question, she stepped back and added, ‘He seemed so eager to talk to you, I mean.’
An impulse Brunetti recognized as protective led him to answer, as calmly as though hers had been a normal question, ‘To ask about the murder of the black man.’
‘He was in a very strange mood,’ she volunteered, prodding for a more satisfactory answer.
Brunetti shrugged. ‘He’s always upset when there’s trouble. It reflects badly on the city.’
‘And that reflects badly on him,’ she completed.
‘Even if the victim isn’t one of us,’ Brunetti said, conscious as he spoke of how much he sounded like Chiara. Before Signorina Elettra’s universalist sympathies were offended, he explained, ‘A Venetian, I mean.’
She appeared to accept this and asked, ‘But why one of those poor devils? They never cause any trouble. All they want to do is stand there and sell their bags and try to have a chance at a decent life.’ She drew herself from these sentiments and asked, ‘Did he assign it to you?’
‘No, not specifically. But he didn’t say he wanted anyone else to handle it, so I assume I’m to continue.’ As he said these bland things, his mind kept attempting to follow the trail that led from Patta’s warning back to its source: if Patta had been threatened to warn Brunetti away, then those who continued the investigation would be in danger.
How had Patta phrased it? ‘We have to leave this alone’? How typical that was of him, to make the statement as though it were the result of long consideration and general assent. And ‘have to’, as if it were a truth universally acknowledged that the case was to be abandoned, the man’s murder forgotten or quietly assigned to the realm of forgetting, that overcrowded land.
A Patta who had never existed might have said, ‘I’m being threatened into silencing you, and the thought of losing my job or being hurt fills me with such fear that I will do whatever I can to corrupt the system of justice and stop you from doing your job, just to keep myself safe.’ This phantom Patta’s voice was so real that it all but blocked out Signorina Elettra’s speaking one. Brunetti blinked a few times and drew his attention back in time to hear her ask, ‘. . still report to you?’
‘Yes, of course,’ he answered, as if he had heard the first half of her question. ‘I’ll go on as though I were in charge until I’m told otherwise.’
‘And then?’ she asked.
‘And then I’ll see who he puts in charge and either help that person or else continue to do things on my own.’ It was not necessary to name the person whose appointment would lead to the latter possibility: even in an organization that did not often hunger and thirst for justice’s sake, Lieutenant Scarpa’s contempt for it was noteworthy. Some of the other commissari were unlikely to achieve success in a case that presented difficulties or complexities, but under the direction of a competent magistrate, they would at least make an attempt to apprehend the guilty and would be handicapped only by inexperience or lack of imagination. Scarpa, however, knew no motivation save self-advancement, and even a whisper from his superior — or from forces Brunetti was reluctant to name — that the case not be pursued would suffice to guarantee its doom.
Luckily, the case could not be given to Scarpa, still only a lieutenant, in spite of all of Patta’s efforts to have him promoted. A commissario would still be the chief police officer in charge of the investigation, though nothing could prevent Patta, should he choose to do so, from assigning Scarpa to the case, as well.
‘If only we didn’t have to worry about him,’ Brunetti said, knowing it was unnecessary to pronounce Scarpa’s name and bemused to hear himself sounding so much like an English king trying to resolve a personnel problem.