Murder on Waverly Place (15 page)

“This is a false wall,” he said, pointing. “It’s the back side of the séance room, where the cabinet is.”

Sarah could see that now. Why would they have built a false wall? Then she noticed the window on the other side of the narrow space and realized they had probably wanted to ensure that no light from a window would spoil the total darkness needed for the séance.

Malloy reached down and picked up a violin, holding it up for her inspection.

“Is that Nicola’s fiddle?” she asked.

“I’m going to guess that it is,” he said.

“How did it get in here?”

“He probably brought it with him when he sneaked out of the séance room to hide.”

“Is this where they found him?” she asked.

“No, he . . .” Malloy stopped and looked around again.

“What’s the matter?”

Malloy frowned. “They didn’t find him at all,” he said, obviously thinking out loud. “O’Toole said they searched the whole house, but they didn’t find him.”

“Maybe they didn’t find this space.”

“No, they found it. O’Toole told me about it.”

“And Nicola wasn’t here?”

“Not when they searched it,” he said, still thinking, puzzling it out.

“Then where
did
they find him?”

“Donatelli caught him sneaking out the back door,” he said. “I’d sent for him because he was the only one I could trust to get you here without the press finding out about your mother. Luckily, he came in the back, and when he got here, Nicola was going out the back door.”

“But where could he have hidden all that time?” she asked.

Malloy didn’t answer. He was still looking at the wall. He set the violin down and started running his hands over the wall.

“What are you doing?” she asked, but of course he didn’t answer. He’d found what he was looking for, and suddenly, a small section of the wall swung silently toward him.

Sarah cried out in surprise. “What on earth?”

“Look at this,” Malloy said in triumph.

Sarah peered into the opening to see the interior of the cabinet. The inside of the section of wall was lined with the same wood as the cabinet, so when the makeshift door was closed, the opening would be invisible. “For heaven’s sake!”

“He probably didn’t get into the cabinet until the séance started. That way if somebody looked inside, they’d know it was empty.”

“Then he could slip in and nobody would be the wiser,” Sarah said, looking around at the crates with new eyes. “What do you suppose he used these things for?” She pulled a hollowed-out block of wood from the top of one crate and examined it curiously.

Malloy took it from her and rapped it with his knuckle, making a sound like the clopping of a horse’s hooves. Her eyes widened in surprise. “Good heavens!”

Malloy glanced around. “I’m sure he could make just about any sound Serafina might need with this stuff.”

“And the gramophone,” Sarah said. “What would he use that for?”

Malloy reached down and picked up a wooden box filled with dozens of cardboard tubes about four inches long and two inches in diameter. Sarah saw that they held records, the hard wax phonographic cylinders that played music on the gramophone. Each tube had something handwritten on top of it, descriptions like “woman scream,” “sewing machine,” “cow mooing,” and “birds.”

Then she saw one that made her gasp. It said, “baby crying.”

“What?” Malloy asked, looking at the boxes and trying to figure out what had shocked her about them.

“This.” She pulled the small tube out and showed him what it said. “During the séance I attended, we heard a baby crying. We thought . . . that is, it was supposed to be my sister Maggie’s baby.”

“Good God,” Malloy said grimly.

“Madame Serafina could certainly come up with any sound she might require with these things,” Sarah said bitterly.

“With Nicola’s help,” Malloy added. He set the box down and began to study the opening into the cabinet again. “After Mrs. Gittings was killed, Nicola must’ve come through the opening into this area and hidden in here until they’d checked the cabinet. Then he would have gotten back into the cabinet until they searched in here. That’s why O’Toole’s men didn’t find him. When he thought it was finally safe, he tried to sneak out of the house. He would’ve gotten away, too, if Donatelli hadn’t come along when he did.”

“But that still doesn’t explain how he could’ve been playing the violin and stabbing Mrs. Gittings at the same time,” Sarah pointed out.

“Maybe one of these records is a violin playing,” Malloy said. “Or maybe the Professor has another explanation. He’s pretty sure the boy is guilty.”

“Maybe he’s just trying to cast suspicion away from himself,” she said.

“I already thought of that, but unless he was back here with Nicola, he couldn’t have gotten into the room without somebody seeing him.”

“And if he’d been in the cabinet with Nicola, I’m sure Nicola would have mentioned it,” she added.

Malloy pushed the door shut. It latched with a barely audible click. “Clever,” he remarked.

“This looks very bad for Nicola, doesn’t it?” Sarah said.

“Yes, it does,” he admitted. “All the people at the séance were holding each other’s wrists the whole time, and I don’t see how anybody else could’ve gotten into the room. And him running away makes it look worse.”

“Not necessarily,” Sarah disagreed. “He knew he was going to get blamed, guilty or not, so what other choice did he have?”

Malloy wouldn’t want to admit she was right, so he just shrugged. “I need to talk to the Professor again.”

“And then what will you do?”

“Keep looking for Nicola, although he’s not going to be easy to find.”

“What about Serafina?”

Malloy frowned. “What about her?”

“If you leave her here, she’s going to disappear, too, along with any chance you have of finding Nicola.”

“I know,” he said, surprising her. “I’ll have to lock her up.”

“No!” Sarah exclaimed in horror. “I didn’t mean—”

“What other choice do I have?” he asked her impatiently. “If the two of them meet up, we’ll never see either of them again, and a killer will go free.”

Sarah wanted to argue, but she didn’t have a moral leg to stand on. When she’d first met Malloy, he probably would have let Nicola go and never thought a thing of it, because this was not the kind of crime the police would normally investigate. Nobody really cared that Mrs. Gittings was dead, except perhaps her partner in crime, and certainly, no one would offer a reward for finding her killer. Only a public outcry or a handsome reward could motivate most police detectives to investigate at all. Malloy had changed in the year since she had met him, however, and now he wanted to see justice done. She couldn’t discourage him in that. “Do you
have
to lock her up?”

“I have to know she’s not going to meet up with Nicola someplace and leave town.”

Sarah nodded her understanding while her mind raced, searching for another option. “I’ll go wait with her while you talk to the Professor.”

 

 

 

F
RANK FOUND THE PROFESSOR WAITING PATIENTLY IN THE barren dining room. He rose from where he’d been sitting in one of the chairs and looked at Frank expectantly.

“Did you help Nicola with the séances?” Frank asked.

The Professor blinked in surprise, but he recovered quickly. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do,” Frank said, not in the mood for games. “I found the door into the cabinet and all the things he used to make noises. Serafina said he was playing the fiddle today during the séance. Did you usually go back there to help him?”

“No,” he said, his cheeks flushed with anger that Serafina had betrayed their secrets. “There’s too much danger a second person will bump into something or make noise. Nicola worked alone.”

“Do you have any idea where he’d go to hide out?”

“None at all,” the Professor said, still stiff with suppressed anger. “Believe me, if I did, I would tell you. He may have some Italian friends who would protect him, but I’m sure they’d want to be paid for their trouble.”

“Did he have any money to pay them with?”

“Mrs. Gittings was too clever to give either of them money. They would be gone in an instant.”

“Along with your livelihood,” Frank remarked, earning another scowl from the Professor.

“I will notify you immediately if he returns here,” he said, ignoring Frank’s provocation.

“Do you think he will?”

“He won’t go far without Serafina.”

“Ah, yes, young love,” Frank said sarcastically.

The Professor sniffed in derision. “Love or not, she’s his livelihood, too.”

Another good reason to lock Serafina up, Frank thought. “I’m taking Serafina in.”

“What do you mean?” the Professor asked in alarm.

“I mean I’m going to lock her up until we find Nicola, so they don’t both disappear.”

“But what about her other clients?” he protested. “They’re already scheduled to come. They’ll be expecting her to be here for a sitting.”

“Then you can tell them how lucky they were not to be here when Mrs. Gittings got stabbed,” Frank said.

He left the Professor sputtering more protests and walked down the hall to the parlor, where the three women were still waiting. He pushed open the door and found them huddled together on the sofa, Serafina in the middle while Sarah and her mother tried to comfort her while she wept. Damn, Sarah must have already told her she was going to jail.

They all looked up, and Sarah rose to her feet, that determined look on her lovely face that always meant she was going to do something to make him angry.

“We’ve worked everything out, Mr. Malloy,” she told him. “Serafina is going to come and stay with me until you find Nicola.”

8

S
ARAH BRACED HERSELF FOR MALLOY’S RESPONSE, BUT SHE wasn’t going to back down. She didn’t like the idea of an innocent girl like Serafina going to The Tombs, which was what they called the city jail because a creative architect had designed it to look like an Egyptian tomb. Heaven only knew what might happen to her there among the prostitutes and hardened criminals she would encounter.

Malloy said, “Can I speak to you in private, Mrs. Brandt?” He didn’t look angry exactly, but then he wouldn’t want her mother or Serafina to see that he was angry with her.

“Certainly,” she said and preceded him across the hall into the office again. The instant the door was closed behind them and before he could explode, she launched into her justification. “I can’t allow you to lock a girl like that up in the Tombs. You know what that place is like, and besides, if she’s locked up, she won’t have any chance at all to contact Nicola, so how can you hope to find him?”

“Do you know what you’re getting into?” he asked, still scowling at her.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Nicola might very well be the killer. Do you want to take a chance of him coming to your house?”

“Nicola isn’t the killer. Serafina swears he was playing the violin, and my mother heard him. Besides, even if he’s guilty, he’d have no reason to harm any of us,” she insisted, “especially if we’re protecting Serafina.”

“He would if he thought you were trying to get him caught.”

“We’re not going to get him caught. How could we? And why would he come to my house at all? He just has to stay away, and he’ll be safe,” she pointed out reasonably.

“All right.”

Sarah gaped at him. She’d never known him to be so obliging.
“All right?”
she echoed uncertainly.

“Yes, it makes perfect sense to take Serafina to your house. She probably knows where Nicola is hiding, and maybe you can get it out of her. Or if Nicola really is innocent, maybe you can find out something from Serafina that will help figure out who the real killer is.”

Sarah couldn’t think of a thing to say.

Malloy studied her for a moment and his mouth quirked in what might have been a smile. “Was that all it took?”

“What?” she asked, completely bewildered.

“To shut you up,” he clarified with a definite grin this time. “All it took was agreeing with you.”

She glared at him. “If you’d ever tried agreeing with me before, you’d have known that,” she snapped.

“I had to wait until you were right about something,” he replied, then hurried to open the door before she could smack him, which she dearly wanted to do. “Get Serafina out of here.”

Sarah made a rude noise. “I’ll take her upstairs to pack some things,” she said, breezing by him out the door and into the hall. Being right should feel better than this, she decided. But at least she’d gotten her way about Serafina.

Serafina and Mrs. Decker looked up expectantly when Sarah went back into the parlor. “He said you could come home with me,” she reported.

“Thank heaven,” Mrs. Decker said, and Serafina breathed something in Italian that might have been a prayer.

“I’ll take you upstairs so you can pack some clothes,” Sarah said. “Then my mother’s carriage can take us to my house.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Brandt,” Serafina said, her eyes still wet with tears. “I could not bear the thought of going to jail.”

Sarah smiled reassuringly and led her out into the hall and up the stairs. The one police officer who had been left to guard the door watched them curiously but made no move to follow.

Upstairs, Serafina entered one of the bedrooms. She pulled a battered carpetbag out from under the bed and set it on the coverlet. She pulled it open and checked inside, then quickly closed it again. Then she looked up and managed a smile. “This won’t take long,” she promised, and went to the chest of drawers. She pulled out some undergarments and quickly bundled them up and stuffed them into the bag. She only had two dresses hanging in the clothespress, and she quickly packed them as well, along with a pair of house slippers and a nightdress. The few toiletries on the washstand went in last, and then she buckled the bag securely. “I am ready.”