Murder on Waverly Place (11 page)

“Doing what?”

“Whatever she requires.”

Frank didn’t let his irritation show. “Like bringing smelling salts?”

“If that’s what she requires.”

This was getting him nowhere. “Tell me what happened here today.”

“We were having a sitting,” he said.

“Yeah, all those people were in the room, holding hands in the dark, talking to the spirits,” Frank said, not bothering to hide his sarcasm. “What were you doing?”

“I was waiting in the kitchen.”

“That’s what you do when there’s a sitting?”

“Yes. My job is to greet the clients and make sure they’re comfortable. Then I stay close by during the sitting, in case I’m needed.”

“How do you know if you’re needed?”

“Madame calls for me.”

“Where were you when she called for you today?”

“In the kitchen, as always.”

“Why didn’t you come then?”

His eyes widened in surprise. “I came!”

“Nobody saw you,” Frank said, stretching the truth a bit. Nobody remembered seeing him, at least.

“I came immediately,” he insisted, a bit defensive.

“And what did you see?”

“I saw . . .” His voice trailed off, and he swallowed audibly. “I saw her on the floor.”

“What did you think when you saw her?”

He made a visible effort to control himself. “I thought she’d fainted. That’s what Madame said. She wanted smelling salts because someone had fainted.”

“When did you know she’d been stabbed?”

“I . . . Someone said it, I think. Then I saw the . . . I saw it. And she wasn’t moving.”

“What did you do then?”

“Everybody started running out of the room. The gentlemen were getting the ladies out. I . . . I went to see if . . . if I could help.”

“You tried to help Mrs. Gittings?”

“Yes, I went to her, but . . . Well, I could see it was too late. Her eyes . . .” His voice caught, and he closed his eyes.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” he said in a near whisper. “It’s just . . . The shock.”

“How did you know she was dead?” Frank prodded mercilessly.

“Her eyes,” he said raggedly. “They were open.”

“What did you do then?”

His eyes flew open and he stared at Frank as if just remembering he was still there. “I went out to find a policeman.”

“Why did you do that?” It was a reasonable question, considering that Madame Serafina would most likely not want any scandal associated with her business, certainly not with her wealthy clients there, and involving the police was the surest way to cause a scandal.

The Professor’s expression hardened. “Because I wanted to be sure that whoever killed her was caught.”

“And you think Nicola killed her?”

“He’s the only one who had a reason.”

“And what is that reason?”

“I told you, she wanted to send him away.”

Frank was confused again. “Mrs. Gittings wanted to send Nicola away?”

“That’s right.”

“Because he was a distraction,” Frank remembered.

“Yes.”

“But why would Madame Serafina have to do what Mrs. Gittings wanted?”

“Because . . .” The Professor caught himself, sitting up straight and staring at Frank again. “Hasn’t anyone told you?”

“Told me what?”

“This is her house.”

“Whose house?”

“Mrs. Gittings. This is her house. She is Madame’s sponsor.”

Suddenly, everything made sense. That was why Mrs. Gittings was at every séance. That was why nobody knew anything about her.
Sponsor
was a nice word. Mrs. Gittings was really the brains behind the whole séance scam. They all worked for her.

Frank nodded his understanding. “How long has this been going on?”

“Almost a year. Madame’s talent was beginning to draw the attention of some important clients.”

Frank thought of Mrs. Felix Decker. “And starting to bring in a lot of money,” he guessed.

“Madame cares nothing for that,” the Professor insisted. “She only wishes to help others.”

Sure, Frank thought. That’s why she charged so much for her services. “But Nicola was causing trouble,” he guessed.

“He’s an ignorant child. He was jealous of Madame’s success, and he was trying to convince her to leave here.”

“Why would she do that?”

The Professor shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “They are lovers,” he admitted. “When Mrs. Gittings discovered Madame, she was supporting him by telling fortunes on street corners. Mrs. Gittings recognized Madame’s true talents and brought her here. Madame insisted on bringing Nicola along. She wouldn’t come without him, in fact, and so we put him to work. For a while, he wasn’t any trouble.”

Frank could imagine what happened next. Nicola saw how much money Serafina brought in with her séances and decided they didn’t need Mrs. Gittings and the Professor anymore. “So Mrs. Gittings wanted to get rid of him.”

The Professor nodded. “They had a terrible fight about it last night.”

“Did she throw him out?”

“No,” the Professor admitted angrily. “Madame refused to continue her work unless Mrs. Gittings allowed him to stay.”

“Sounds like a compromise,” Frank observed.

“One that pleased no one,” the Professor said bitterly. “So Nicola found a solution of his own.”

Someone knocked on the door. Frank muttered a curse and got up to answer it. The cop guarding the front door grinned sheepishly. “Sorry to bother you, but Donatelli’s here with a lady. She says she’s come for Mrs. Brandt.”

“Wait here,” Frank told the Professor.

He stepped into the hallway and saw Sarah Brandt standing there. The sight of her brought him a surge of unreasonable joy even though he hated the very thought of having her at a murder scene. She gave him the smile he loved, which only made it worse.

He nodded politely, careful not to say her name. “Your mother’s in there,” he said, nodding toward the office door, which opened as he spoke. Mrs. Decker stuck her head out.

“Mother,” Sarah said.

“Oh, Sarah, I’m so glad you’re here,” Mrs. Decker said with relief.

Then the door to the parlor opened and Madame Serafina cried, “Mrs. Brandt, oh, please, you’ve got to help us!”

Before anyone could stop her, she threw herself into Sarah’s arms and began to sob.

Sarah looked up at Frank accusingly.

“I haven’t even talked to her yet,” he defended himself.

“They’re going to arrest Nicola,” Madame claimed to Sarah. “But he didn’t do anything. I swear to you, he’s innocent!”

“Who’s Nicola?” Sarah and her mother asked in unison.

“Her lover,” Frank said.

This shocked Sarah and her mother and made Madame sob more loudly.

They all heard a disturbance upstairs followed by shouting. Nicola was probably trying to get downstairs to find out why his lover was crying. Frank noticed Gino Donatelli standing behind Sarah. “Donatelli, go upstairs and see what you can get out of that Nicola fellow.”

Donatelli pushed by them and hurried up the stairs. Frank turned back to Sarah and her mother, who were still trying to comfort Madame Serafina.

“What on earth is going on?” Sarah asked him.

He wanted to tell her it was all none of her business and why didn’t she just take her mother home and forget she’d ever been in this house? He wanted to get her as far away from here as possible and erase any memory of Madame Serafina from her mind. He wanted to perform a miracle. Unfortunately, it was far too late even for a miracle.

Instead he sighed with resignation and said, “Why don’t you take Madame Serafina back into the parlor and get her calmed down?”

6

S
ARAH COULD SEE HOW MUCH MALLOY WANTED HER OUT of there. He hated involving her in murder investigations. How many times had they both vowed she’d never be involved again? She almost wished she could oblige him this time, but with the poor girl sobbing in her arms, she couldn’t possibly walk out, not even if it meant protecting her mother from scandal. In point of fact, her mother didn’t look like she was all too eager to leave either.

“There, now,” Mrs. Decker was saying soothingly. “Crying isn’t going to help anything. Why don’t you come back inside here with us.”

“You won’t leave me alone?” Madame said, looking more like the young girl that she was than the sophisticated spiritualist she’d pretended to be.

“Absolutely not,” Sarah assured her, pretending not to notice the face Malloy made when she said it. She turned the girl and walked her back into the parlor, her mother close behind. When the doors were safely shut behind them, Sarah seated the girl on one of the sofas and sat down beside her. “Can I get you something? Some tea?”

“No, no,” Madame said quickly. “I . . . What will they do with Nicola?”

“Who’s this Nicola?” Mrs. Decker asked, taking a seat in the chair beside the sofa.

“He is my
fidanzato
,” she said. “We are to be married. I am not sure of the word . . .”

“Fiancé?” Sarah supplied.

“Yes,” she said. Her remarkable eyes shone with unshed tears.

“But why would he want to kill Mrs. Gittings?” Sarah asked.

“He would not,” Madame assured her. “He would not want to kill anyone, but the police will accuse him, and because he is poor, no one will believe him, and he will hang—” Her voice caught on another sob.

“Slow down!” Sarah cried. “You’re getting way ahead of yourself. I promise you, Detective Malloy won’t arrest him if he’s innocent.”

“How can you know? He is the police!” Madame reminded her tragically.

She was right, of course. The New York Police were notorious for arresting whoever might be handy, with no regard for what the truth might be. Unless someone paid them a “reward” to find the real culprit, anyone might be charged and convicted of a crime. This Nicola sounded like someone who could easily fall into that category. “Mr. Malloy is a friend of mine,” Sarah said. “That’s why my mother insisted that he be called in to investigate.”

“You know a policeman?” Madame asked, staring at Sarah and her mother in amazement. People like Mrs. Decker did not know policemen.

“Yes, we do,” Mrs. Decker confirmed. “Mr. Malloy will make sure that the real killer is found and punished.”

Sarah hoped he would be able to do this. Right now, she knew too little of what had transpired here to be sure. “Can you tell me what happened? The policeman who came to get me didn’t know very much except that Mrs. Gittings had been stabbed.”

Madame straightened, looking back at Sarah with some apprehension. “I do not know what happened,” she said rather stiffly. “I was . . . Yellow Feather was there. I was in a trance. The first thing I knew was Mrs. Burke was screaming that Mrs. Gittings had fainted.”

Sarah wanted to ask her a question, but her mother jumped in before she could.

“It was horrible, Sarah. Yellow Feather was trying to contact Maggie, but there were a lot of spirits there today, and they were all talking at once. He couldn’t hear what she was saying. He started shouting, trying to quiet them down, and then everyone else starting talking at once.”

“The spirits?” Sarah asked in confusion.

“No, of course not. Everyone in the room. They all wanted to ask questions, so they started shouting, trying to make themselves heard. They were extremely rude,” she added, a bit outraged. “I couldn’t understand a thing.”

“When was Mrs. Gittings stabbed?” Sarah asked. She glanced at Madame Serafina, but she was studying her hands where they were folded in her lap.

Her mother had to think about it. “That’s just it, we don’t know exactly when she was stabbed. She didn’t scream or anything, so far as I heard, which now seems very strange. Wouldn’t you scream or at least cry out if someone stabbed you? The first hint we had that something was wrong was when Kathy . . . Mrs. Burke, she started screaming.”

“Did she see Mrs. Gittings get stabbed?”

“Oh, no,” her mother assured her. “None of us did. The room was dark, just the way it was at the séance you attended, dear.”

Sarah nodded, remembering how she hadn’t been able to see a thing in the pitch-dark room. “Were you holding hands?”

“Yes, just the way we did that other time. Everyone was holding someone else’s hands or, rather, their wrists. So of course we would have known if anyone at the table had let go to . . . Well, you know. Then Kathy . . . Mrs. Burke started to scream that Mrs. Gittings had fainted. That’s what she thought, of course.”

“Why did she think that?”

“Because she fell out of her chair, and naturally, she wouldn’t assume the woman had died, at least not at first. Mrs. Burke said she fell against her. She was quite hysterical when she realized the woman was actually dead.”

“I’m sure she was,” Sarah said. “When did
you
realize that?”

“As soon as someone opened the door, and we got a good look at her. The knife . . . Well, we all saw it sticking out of her back.” Suddenly, her mother looked a bit pale.

Sarah reached over and took her hand. “I’m so sorry you had to go through this.”

“Not your fault,” her mother reminded her sheepishly. “You made me promise not to come back here, didn’t you.”

“I’ll say I told you so later,” she promised in return and turned back to Madame Serafina. “Could anyone else have gotten into the room?”

“Oh, no,” Mrs. Decker answered for her. “Remember, we would have seen if someone had opened the door. I’m sure no one else could have come in.”

Sarah nodded, recalling quite clearly. That meant someone at the table must have killed the woman, although that didn’t really seem possible. Fortunately, figuring out how it had happened was Malloy’s job. She might be able to help him along, though. “Do you have any idea why someone would
want
to kill Mrs. Gittings?” she asked the girl.