Murder On The Rue Cassette (A Serafina Florio Mystery) (13 page)

He sat and held his head again.

Serafina was silent for a while.

“What clothes did she choose?”

He threw up his hands. “A day
dress, a suit, I suppose you’d say.”

“And what time did she leave?”

“I didn’t look at my watch, but
it was well after midnight.”

“No one else was here? Forgive
me, a stupid question. Did she say where she was going?”

He shook his head, unable to
speak, buried his head. The monks were still chanting next door.

“I’m very sorry to admit she is
my countrywoman.” Serafina was silent for a while. “Did you hear about the
woman shot to death in the Rue Cassette?”

He nodded. “I saw her body lying
in the street.”

“Why would you have? She died
early in the morning.”

“After Elena left, I became
frenzied, and to calm myself, I walked the streets. Walking helps me, you see,
something I do when I need to work on a problem. I was aimless that night. I
walked along the Seine, in the Luxembourg, sat on a bench, my mind a blank,
trying not to think of her, of what I’d done ... to my life. As I made my way
home, I noticed a commotion in the Rue Cassette.
Sergents de ville
were there in droves kneeling around a body, a
photographer, a doctor, perhaps, an ambulance. I remember the horse was
skittish. A crowd was gathering. Not unusual. There are a few cafés that draw a
low clientele. I asked someone what had happened. A dead woman, he told me.”

“Did you see her face?”

“Not all of it, she was lying on
her side. She looked like a woman of the night.”

“Could it have been Elena?”

“Hardly. Not her height or
shape, not at all. Smaller. I bent down and looked. It was a passing glance,
but I didn’t recognize her.” Gaston was hugging himself, trying to keep from
shaking.

“And no one saw you?”

“They saw me, but would they
remember? Hardly. They were watching horror, much in demand. They were drunk
with it.”

As she was about to leave, she
thought of one more question. “Do you own a gun?”

He looked at her like she’d gone
round the twist. “I have a gun, yes. For protection.”

“May I see it?”

“Of course.”

While she waited for Gaston to
return, she thought about what he’d told her. At first she disbelieved his
version of Elena’s behavior. But the man was suffering, that was apparent.

When he returned, he was still
shaking. “I must have misplaced it. I can’t seem to find it anywhere.” He
pulled at the sides of his hair.

“Sit down. Tell me about the
gun.”

Gaston shrugged. “New. A
revolver made in France near Lyon. I bought it from a friend last year.”

“Where do you usually keep it?”

“In a locked drawer in my bed
chamber.”

“Was the lock tampered with?”

Gaston shook his head.

Chapter
14: La Maison Dorée

How she obtained a reservation
no one quite knew except that Serafina saw Rosa engage three of the hotel’s
staff in animated conversation at the concierge station. Precisely at nine, a
voiture de grande remise
pulled up in front of the Hôtel
du Louvre. The driver helped them into the carriage drawn by a matching pair of
grays and drove to La Maison Dorée on the Boulevard des Italiens.

They were seated at a large
round table in a private cabinet with a view of the main dining room.
Arcangelo, his hair slicked and his face washed, sat next to Tessa. Wearing her
teal brocade and a sea green velvet choker, she glanced at Teo who sat on her
other side, his face buried in the wine list. Carmela, Rosa, and Serafina were
dressed in evening gowns, Gesuzza in her finest black bombazine. Waiters swarmed
around them as the maître d’hôtel welcomed them to his restaurant, “The finest
in all of Paris.” It looked as though every table was taken and the
high-ceilinged room blazed with candles.

“May I suggest some simple
dishes to start the meal? I recommend the escargots from Burgundy marinated in
a delicate white wine, a fresh green bean salad, the first of the season, a
foie gras de canard with fig and grape, and—”

Rosa answered the waiter.
“Perfect. Bring them. Two of everything. But before you do, bring us champagne
while we wait. Veuve Cliquot. And bring a few baguettes or rolls or whatever
kind of bread you offer and some paté. These boys are dying of hunger.”

Arcangelo eyed all the forks and
spoons on either side of his plate. Serafina told him to start with the
outermost fork or spoon and work his way in. A waiter overheard. Dressed like
the others in livery with wig and knee breeches, he hiked his nose higher than
Serafina thought possible.

After their food arrived, she
felt rather than saw the waiters around their table lifting their shoulders, so
she asked the maître d’hôtel for more privacy.

They toasted Paris and their
hotel. Carmela drank to Busacca et Fils.

While they ordered the main
course, Serafina told them of her visit to the Rue Cassette, her fortuitous
meeting with the policeman who found the body, the statement she’d wrung from
the owner of the Café Odile, and her meeting with Étienne Gaston, and his
assertion that the dead woman on the Rue Cassette was not Elena.

“Why did the owner of the Café
Odile lie?” Tessa asked.

“Lucre, my girl.” Rosa turned to
Serafina. “Give me the barkeep’s statement. I’ll give it to Valois and get him
to spring Loffredo. Remember, you cannot be seen to be in Loffredo’s camp, much
less in his bed.”

There was a hush around the
table as Tessa, Teo, and Arcangelo looked at one another. Serafina felt her
face fill with color.

Each of them had an opinion of
Gaston. They were a hung jury: three said he was guilty, three, not guilty,
Serafina abstaining.

“I can’t make up my mind about
him,” she said.

“What little there is of it
tonight,” Rosa added.

When their entrées arrived,
Serafina took a bite of her duckling, marveling at the crunch of the skin, the
sweet tenderness of the meat. It was cooked to perfection, sizzling on the
plate and filled with a bread and orange stuffing. She relished all the
different flavors. Perhaps the French relied too much on sauce. Still, she was
glad to partake of their cuisine and to share the experience with her daughter
and friends.

“Our meeting with Valois is not
until nine tomorrow morning and there is one thing we need to explore
beforehand, Elena’s apartment.” She sliced a piece of duck and dipped it into a
side dish of mashed potatoes.

“How will we do that?” Rosa
asked, her mouth full of veal sautéed in apples.

“I’m not sure, but we’ve always
managed before this. We’ll find a custodian or some other servant who’ll let us
into her apartment. You know how Elena always angers them. It won’t be
difficult to get them on our side. We’re sure to find information that we must
have.”

Carmela cleared her throat.
“Arcangelo and Teo were over there this afternoon.”

“It’s a distance. How did they
manage?”

Arcangelo, his cheeks distended
with food, looked at her. His eyes reflected candlelight.

Carmela answered for him. “They
took
le
petite ceinture
.”

“The train that goes around
Paris,” Rosa explained, dabbing her mouth with the linen.

“And what did you see?”

Arcangelo swallowed his food. “A
fancy building on a square. Custodian or guard or something, has a station just
inside the gate and we talked to him. I said I was Elena’s friend and had
important information for her. The custodian told me she was out at the
moment.”

“Did he say when she’d be back?”

He shrugged. “He doesn’t expect
her back until next week.”

“We ought to be able to talk our
way in,” Rosa said.

“If we arrive by seven tomorrow
morning, taking this train you speak of, we should be able to finish our
business and meet with Valois at nine as planned,” Serafina said.

Rosa nodded.

“Reasonable, but I think we need
a better plan for insinuating ourselves into her apartment,” Carmela said.

“Let me worry about that,” Rosa
said.

“She plans to grease her way
inside,” Serafina said.

“Do you have a better plan?”
Rosa broke her bread, spreading it with paté.

Carmela put down her fork.
“There might be a way to prove that the body is not that of Elena.” She took a
sip of wine. “We need to ask Valois about the coroner’s report, whether or not the
victim was with child. According to the women we met at the exhibit today,
Elena boasted of her condition.”

“We might learn the name of her
midwife from going through her desk,” Serafina said.

The main course was surpassed
only by the dessert, a
glace au four
with mounds of creamy ice and
topped in chocolate sauce that drizzled down the side. Even Teo smiled when he
saw it.

On the way home Serafina’s
corset pinched unmercifully. She gazed out the window but was unaware of time
passing until they’d been delivered to their door and Rosa touched her arm,
telling her to get out of the carriage.

Chapter
15: A Visit to Elena’s Apartment

Teo licked his lips thinking of
Maria’s hands on the keyboard. He thought of their beauty and suppleness. Of
her concentration. He wondered how one person could be born with so much
talent.

One day she would be his friend
again and life between them would be better. After all, she did walk to school
with him that one time, so there was hope. He swallowed, remembering the last
morning they’d walked together and how she’d talked to him about Brahms and how
most people in Oltramari misunderstood his music. “Most people in Oltramari
never heard of Brahms,” he’d said. But she hadn’t been listening. A group of
her friends had overtaken them. They pointed their fingers at him, calling him
moon face and sniggering. After that, Maria refused to walk with him. He forced
the memory from his mind.

When he wasn’t working with
Carmela, Teo tried to think of the perfect gift he could bring Maria from
Paris. If he attended a concert, he could tell her about it. But how would he
do that? He’d seen a notice in the Galignani Guide of an organ recital at St.
Sulpice and found the church on the map. He’d missed the concert, but perhaps
he could find a program lying about in the square. He stared out the window,
his hand on the sash about to close it, mesmerized by all the horse-drawn
vehicles, the laughter, the streets lit by hundreds of gas lamps.

In the Place du Palais Royal
below, he saw a new machine, one he’d never seen at home. Carmela called it a
bicycle. Now several men about his age stood on the edge of the square holding
the wheeled contraption between them and jostled for a turn to work the pedals.
They snorted, full of life, happy, hopeful, like most of the people in this
city.

Teo felt a stone lodge in his
throat. What chance would he have against all the gentlemen Maria would meet
when she began playing in Paris or Berlin or New York? He was an orphan with a
moon face from a rusted-out part of the world. He had nothing to his name
except a set of knucklebones carved long ago by his father.

Rubbing his hands on his
breeches, Teo peered out the window taking one last look at the men and women
walking in the square below, dressed in finery so different from his own plain
clothes. The bicycle and the young men were gone, but he saw someone he
recognized talking to a driver wearing a top hat. Teo watched as the driver
helped the woman into a carriage. It was Donna Fina. He hurried down the steps
and outside.

* * *

After she said goodnight to the
others, Serafina found herself restless, unable to ready herself for sleep. She
had to get out and walk. They’d be seeing Valois the next day and she must be
prepared with as much information as possible. She couldn’t sleep and didn’t
want to leave investigating Elena’s apartment until tomorrow—they’d have
to rise at four, in less than three hours. What better time to explore than
tonight? So she ran outside, hailed a cab, and gave the driver Elena’s address.

The horses clattered over the
cobbles, noisy like her stomach. Despite the late hour Parisians were still out
enjoying the evening, some with their dogs, but most of them with their lovers
walking along the quai, stopping for a heated embrace. At one point the driver
halted for congestion, an altercation ahead, perhaps. From the corner of her
eye she saw an aging woman of the night trussed up in street garb, frilly red lace,
her face artfully painted and pointed toward the stars as she leaned against a
lamppost, blowing smoke. When the carriage passed, Serafina watched the woman’s
hips swaying suggestively as she moved away, head held high. A moment later,
she disappeared. Serafina swore all the women in Paris, even the poorest, had
exciting taste, wore the latest style, or made the most of what they had.
Except for her. The night was young and so alive. She missed Loffredo.

The carriage stopped in front of
a large building on the Rue de Passy facing a quaint square. She paid the fare
and asked the driver to wait, but he declined, saying she’d have no trouble
hiring another cab and pointing to a line of fiacres on the other side of the
Place de Passy. Waving a dismissive hand and holding her skirts, she made her
way up the staircase. She knocked and a liveried servant answered the door and
showed her inside.

The building’s concierge sat
behind his desk reading an ancient copy of
Le Figaro
.
Handing her card to him, she suddenly felt tongue-tied and began to stammer.

“May I help you, Madame?”

“I am here to visit Elena
Loffredo.”

Smelling of cheap wine and
wearing a threadbare frock coat, the concierge ran a pink hand down a large
ledger, shaking his head. In a few moments he looked up at her with fat lips,
reminding her of Oltramari’s embalmer.

“A pity, you have just missed
her. You see my note here.” He swung the ledger around to show her an illegible
scrap near Elena’s name.

Serafina played her card. “But
we’d arranged to meet. She expects me now as a matter of fact.” She looked at
her watch. “Oh, I see, I’m a few minutes early. Would you mind terribly if I
...” she looked around ... “too drafty for me in the lobby. In a large building
like this there must be many visitors. I’d hate to catch a cold. Evening air,
you see. Might I wait for her upstairs in her apartment? We’re old friends. I’m
from the same town as she is in Sicily.”

“Unfortunately, Madame, I hate
to—”

Serafina slipped some bills
underneath the ledger.

The concierge smiled. “Right
this way. The countess occupies the two top floors.”

The building had a lift with a
grill instead of a door and she was able to see out as they passed the floors.
She and the concierge squeezed in together. She listened as they creaked their
way up to Elena’s apartment on the top two floors. As they passed one of the
lower floors, she looked out and saw the figure of a woman clad in black,
doubled over as if in pain, but quickly passing from view. When they reached
the top floor, the concierge unlocked Elena’s door and turned on a few of the
gas lamps in the hall and parlor.

“I’m on duty for the next thirty
minutes, so please ring for me if there’s anything else I may do for you.
Otherwise, should you tire before the contessa returns, extinguish the lights
and shut the door.”

The rooms in Elena’s apartment
were cold, drafty, the grates unused, although there seemed to be ... yes ...
she found a radiator. Like their hotel rooms, the apartments here were heated.
She looked at the ceiling, the walls, the furniture. A preponderance of plaster
and gilt. Paintings hung in all the rooms, but she didn’t have time or enough
light to admire them. Everything seemed expensive and well maintained, although
there was a film of dust on the furniture and love seats, grit on the carpets
and floor.

The silence was eerie. She
walked to the windows that looked out onto the Château de la Muette and beyond
it, to the Bois de Boulogne. She could understand how Elena would choose to
live here, but did not fathom how the concierge could have seen Elena this
evening, unless he had been paid to tell visitors that they’d just missed her.

She felt her heart pounding as
she entered a smaller room, a ladies’ parlor no doubt. Waiting for her eyes to
adjust to the low light, she saw a series of prints on the wall, reproductions
of works by a French painter Serafina was familiar with, Jacques-Louis David.
She was admiring them when she thought she heard something move. An animal? She
waited, listening. Nothing but her imagination. She found gas jets on the walls
and after some fumbling, turned on a few jets and saw a desk with a lamp in the
corner of the room. On top of it was an appointment book. She turned a few of
the pages, but it was unused. After she opened the middle drawer she stopped.
There was a definite scratching sound coming from somewhere in back of her. An
animal. Concentrating on breathing slowly, she took one step, then another and
another. The drapes had not been drawn, and the glow from the street lamps lent
the rooms a ghostly light. She made her way through to the dining room and had
just entered the kitchen when she heard the scratching noise again.

Hearing the blood thrumming in
her ears and hoping she hadn’t heard mice, she looked down and stood still. A
sweet looking kitten was lying on the floor next to something else, a bowl. She
bent down and stroked its fur and heard the animal purr, almost as loud as her
heart was pounding. She lifted bowl and peered inside. It must have contained
water. “Poor little thing, mice must be scarce here and you’ve had no water in
a while.”

Elena was many things, but she
would never starve a kitten. She filled the bowl with water from the slate sink
and the thirsty feline slurped and drank.

“Well, we’ll have to do
something about you, won’t we? She felt the animal’s bones through its fur, but
remembered that she had a job to do before she could care for it.

She walked back to the ladies’
parlor and began riffling through the desk drawer where she found an address book,
some envelopes, scraps of paper, and a note pad with writing. She held up the
address book and found the same scrawl on every page, addresses written
everywhere, scribbled into all the margins and filling all the lines. On the
last page was a small calendar. She held the book closer to the lamp, but it
was hard to read Elena’s script, so she slipped the book, the envelopes, the
wad of paper and notepad into her pocket and began walking through the rest of
the rooms, wondering where she’d find the set of stairs leading to the second
floor. Hearing a soft tapping she felt a presence, and the kitten pranced into
the room, stopping to rub itself against every piece of furniture. Pawing her
skirt, the animal looked up with such pleading eyes before he wound himself in
between her legs and scratched at her petticoat. Unless Elena suddenly
appeared, Serafina would have to find a way to take the mouser with her. She
couldn’t leave it to starve to death here. Gesuzza would take care of it until
she found a home for the sweet creature. She picked up the kitten and walked
into the rear of the house when she heard a loud banging on the door.

Her heart slammed into her
throat. The kitten jumped from her arms and took off.

More pounding on the door.

“Help!”

Serafina ran to the front and
opened the door.

A maid in black uniform and
white apron and cap was doubled over and holding her stomach. Definitely with
child. And about to deliver, too, judging by the pool of wet by the woman’s
feet. The young woman braced herself on the wall. “Oh ... my. Help me, please
... I saw you pass by in the lift. I thought you must be Elena. You can’t tell
Madame. She mustn’t know.” The maid cried out.

“Don’t worry. Don’t talk,”
Serafina said. We’ve got to get you inside.” The maid had trouble walking but
she leaned on Serafina and together they made it to one of the bedrooms.

“Where’s Elena?” the woman
asked.

Serafina said nothing. She tore
the spread off and lowered the bedding, undid the woman’s outer garments, and
helped her out of her undergarments. After covering her with a blanket, she
positioned her on one knee and told her to lean on the side of the bed.
Serafina put an ear to the girl’s stomach and took a look.

“It won’t be long. This isn’t
your first, is it?”

The girl shook her head. “Only
once, that’s all it was. Just once. With Honoré, and where is he now?” She
wailed, hung her head.

Serafina wiped the young woman’s
forehead. “I’m a midwife, but I don’t have my satchel with me. Not to worry,
we’ll manage just fine.”

She ran to the kitchen and
boiled some water. She filled a bowl with the steaming liquid. The woman was
screaming as Serafina carried the water and towels back into the room.

“Now do as I say, breathe
slowly, breathe in, out, pant a little like this.” She wet a towel and wiped
the woman’s brow.

“Where do you work?”

“Downstairs. For Madame
Gruenfeld, she doesn’t know, she must never find out.”

“Where is she now?”

“On holiday. Comes back next
week. I must keep my job.”

“You’re the only one?”

She nodded.

“What about your family? Do they
know?”

She shook her head, moaned. “My
father would kill me.”

“Do you live with them?”

She shook her head.

Serafina took another look.
“Your name?”

“Mimette.”

“Call me Donna Fina. Everyone
does. When the pains come, start pushing.”

“You are from here?”

Serafina shook her head.
“Breathe, Mimette, like this.” Serafina panted to show her and the maid did as
she was told.

She cried out. “I saw you go up
in the lift.” She panted. “I thought you were Elena.”

Serafina wiped the maid’s brow.
“You know Elena?”

“She’s been helping me, but
she’s away. Elena asked to me watch over Papillon while she’s away.”