Murder on Waverly Place (21 page)

“He . . . Mrs. Gittings made me tell him to invest money in a . . . I do not know. Something her friend was doing.”

“Some phony investment scheme,” Malloy guessed.

“Why would Mr. Cunningham do that?” Sarah asked.

“Because he needed more money,” Serafina said, her cheeks crimson with fury. “Mrs. Gittings told him if he offered more money, he could . . . he could have me.”

“That’s unspeakable!” Mrs. Decker declared.

“But he lost his money, didn’t he?” Malloy asked relentlessly.

“Yes, and then I was supposed to tell him to invest more. Mrs. Gittings kept telling him he needed more and more . . .” Her voice broke, and she covered her mouth, fighting tears.

“What a horrible woman,” Mrs. Decker said as Sarah put an arm around Serafina. “I’m not sure whoever killed her did such a bad thing.”

“Wait a minute,” Malloy said. “I thought Cunningham was rich. Why would he need this phony investment scheme to get the money Mrs. Gittings wanted?”

“His
family
is rich,” Serafina said. “But he only gets an allowance. He does not inherit his father’s fortune until he is twenty-five, in three more years.”

“Where did he get the money to invest then?” Malloy asked.

“From his mother. She . . . He is her only child. She is very generous, but she would not give him money for a mistress,” Serafina said, spitting out the last word.

“Thank heaven for that, at least,” Mrs. Decker murmured.

“How much money did Cunningham lose to Mrs. Gittings’s friend?” Malloy asked.

“I do not know.”

“If he was going to use the money to get Serafina away from Mrs. Gittings and then he lost it,” Sarah said, “he might have been desperate enough to kill her.”

“But we were both holding his hands,” Mrs. Decker reminded her.

“Serafina,” Malloy said, startling her. “If you can keep one hand free when everybody is holding hands around the table, can you keep both hands free?”

“I do not know,” she said in surprise. “I have never tried it.”

“Let’s try it now,” he said, offering Mrs. Decker his wrist. They all joined hands again.

“Now Serafina is getting up, and I’m going to start coughing and let go.” Malloy and Serafina freed both of their hands. “Then Serafina comes back, but I don’t put my hands on the table this time.” He pulled his hands back and put them in his lap. “Mrs. Decker, you’d be looking for my hand in the dark.”

“And Serafina would be looking for your other hand,” Sarah said, understanding how it could work.

Mrs. Decker took Serafina’s wrist in her left hand, but then she shook her head. “No, no. I might take her wrist by mistake in the dark, but I would never believe it was yours, Mr. Malloy.”

“Could you have mistaken it for Cunningham’s, though?” he challenged her. “He’s a much thinner man.”

“Yes, he is,” Serafina said in surprise. “I had not thought of it before.”

“Could that have happened, Mother?” Sarah asked.

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Decker said with a frown, “but it’s possible, I suppose.”

“Even if he could get free, he’d still have to find Mrs. Gittings in the dark, though,” Sarah pointed out.

“And how would he know where to stab her?” Mrs. Decker added. “He would have had to feel around in the dark, and she would have noticed if someone touched her. Surely, she would have cried out in surprise, if nothing else.”

“I don’t think it would be too hard,” Malloy mused. “He didn’t have to walk far, and he’d hear people talking, so he could get his bearings that way.”

“He could touch the chairs,” Serafina offered.

They all looked at her in surprise.

“You touch the backs of the chairs,” she repeated. “That is how you know where you are.”

“So he could just walk around the table until he came to the third chair, where he knew Mrs. Gittings was sitting,” Malloy said. “The chair back would tell him where her body was, so all he had to do was—”

“That’s enough,” Sarah said quickly. “We understand. But could he have gotten up quietly enough so no one noticed?”

“Everybody was shouting,” Malloy reminded them. “Were you paying attention to the people around you, Mrs. Decker?”

“Not at all,” she said in surprise. “I would have known if someone let go of my hand, but if Mr. Cunningham had slid his chair back and gotten up, I doubt I would have noticed.”

“But shouldn’t someone have noticed when Mrs. Gittings got stabbed?” Sarah asked. “Wouldn’t she have screamed or something?”

“I asked the medical examiner the same thing, and he said no,” Malloy said. “The knife went straight into her heart, and she died quickly.”

“But surely she felt some pain when the knife went in,” Sarah said.

“She might’ve felt a pain, but since she wasn’t expecting to be stabbed, she probably wouldn’t have thought it was anything really bad,” Malloy explained. “Everybody has unexpected pains from time to time. They usually just pass, and we forget about them.”

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Decker exclaimed. “I think we’ve proven that any one of the three of them could be the killer.”

“And don’t forget the Professor,” Malloy said.

“But he wasn’t even in the room,” Sarah reminded him.

Malloy turned to Serafina. “Could he have gotten in without anybody knowing it?”

She frowned. “He could have come in through the cabinet, but Nicola was in there. He would have seen him, and he would have told me.”

“Is there any other way to sneak in?”

“No,” Serafina said.

Malloy gave her one of his glares.

The girl blinked but held her ground. “I would tell you,” she insisted. “I want to help.”

“Of course you do, dear,” Mrs. Decker soothed her and gave Malloy a reproving glance.

He ignored it. “Supposing he could have gotten into the room somehow, did he have any reason to want Mrs. Gittings dead?”

Serafina considered the question for a long moment. “I do not know.”

“You said they were lovers,” Sarah reminded her, thinking that was a strange word to use for middle-aged people but unable to think of another. “Did they get along well?”

The girl shook her head. “Mrs. Gittings was mean to him. She said he was stupid.”

“Did they argue?” Sarah asked.

“No, no, the Professor, he is very quiet. He would say nothing when she said mean things to him.”

“But she trusted him with the money,” Malloy remembered. “He knew the combination to the safe. He could have taken it and disappeared.”

“No, they were saving for something,” Serafina said. “At least . . .” She stopped, remembering.

“What is it?” Sarah prodded.

The girl pursed her lips as she tried to recall. “At first, the Professor and Mrs. Gittings would talk about what they were going to do when they had enough money. They were going to bankroll something, they said. I did not understand what it was, but they would get very excited when they talked about it because they would get very rich. The Professor, he had done it before, but he was just a steerer then and did not earn much money.”

“A
what
?” Malloy asked sharply.

“A steerer,” Serafina repeated uncertainly. “I think that is the word.”

“What else did they say about it?” Malloy asked urgently.

“I do not know,” Serafina said in dismay. “I did not pay attention, but it does not matter, because then she changed her mind.”

“What do you mean?” Sarah asked.

“She saw they could make a lot of money from the séances. She said . . . she said it was easier and not as dangerous. She said no one would get killed,” she remembered suddenly.

“That’s what she said?” Malloy asked. “That nobody would get killed?”

“Yes, this other thing, what the Professor wanted to do, that was dangerous, but the séances were not. She said they attracted a better class of people.” Serafina glanced at Mrs. Decker apologetically.

“And did the Professor agree with her?” Sarah asked.

“No, no,” Serafina said. “He was not happy. They would argue about it at night sometimes, after Nicola and I went to bed.”

“Why didn’t he just take the money himself?” Malloy asked.

“They did not have enough yet. I think . . .”

“What do you think, dear?” Mrs. Decker asked when Serafina hesitated.

“I think they would never give me my part of the money,” she said bitterly. “I think they would have taken it all and left us with nothing.”

Sarah thought that, too.

“So the Professor stayed because he didn’t have enough money yet to do whatever it was he wanted to do with it,” Malloy said, drawing Serafina’s attention back. “But Mrs. Gittings had changed her mind and just wanted to keep doing the séances.”

“Yes, she asked did he not like living in a nice house and not worrying about the police. She said he was stupid to think about anything else. But he said they could live in a mansion and never have to work again.”

Malloy sat back and considered what she had told him.

“Do you know what it was he wanted to do?” Sarah asked him.

“I have a good idea,” he replied.

“What do you think it was?”

“They call it the Green Goods Game.”

“What is it?” Sarah asked.

“It’s a way to trick people out of their money. They send out letters all over the country, offering to sell people counterfeit money.”

“Is that legal?” Mrs. Decker asked in amazement.

Malloy’s mouth quirked, but he managed not to smile. “Not at all. But lots of people are curious enough to travel to New York to find out more about it. The operators pay all their travel expenses, too, even if they decide not to buy in. So the suckers come to New York and somebody—the one they call the steerer—meets them at the train and takes them to a hotel. Then the steerer takes them to meet the one they call the Old Gentleman, who is someone who looks very respectable. The Old Gentleman shows them a suitcase full of what they think is the counterfeit money, except it’s real money.”

“Real money? Why would they show them real money?” Sarah asked.

“To convince them it’s good quality so they’ll buy it.”

“How much does counterfeit money cost?” Mrs. Decker asked with interest.

“Ten cents on the dollar. When the sucker is convinced, he pays for the money, and the operators lock it into a suitcase for him. Then the steerer escorts him right back to the train that will take him back home and puts him on it.”

“I do not understand,” Serafina said. “How does this make any money if they sell real money for less than it is worth?”

“Because when the sucker is distracted, the operators switch suitcases. When the sucker gets home and opens it, it’s full of sawdust or blank pieces of paper or bricks or something.”

“But don’t they go back to New York and complain that they were swindled?” Mrs. Decker asked, outraged.

This time Malloy couldn’t help smiling. “What would they say? That they were trying to buy counterfeit money and someone cheated them?”

The women all exclaimed their surprise.

“How clever!” Sarah said. “And you think this is what the Professor wanted to use the money for?”

“Yes, but they’d need at least ten thousand dollars in cash to show the suckers. The operators usually have somebody who gives them the money to show the suckers and takes about half the profits. The steerer and the Old Gentleman and their other helpers each get a share of the other half.”

“How much could someone earn doing this?” Sarah asked.

“At least a couple thousand dollars.”

“A year?” Mrs. Decker asked.

“No,” Malloy told her. “A
day
.”

The women gasped. A couple thousand dollars was a good annual wage for a working man.

“No wonder the Professor was trying to convince Mrs. Gittings to do it,” Sarah said.

“But Mrs. Gittings was afraid it was too dangerous,” Serafina reminded them.

“It is,” Malloy said. “Sometimes the suckers get suspicious, or they figure out what’s going on, and they pull a gun or the operators do. Sometimes people get shot.”

“So that explains what the Professor wanted the money for,” Sarah said.

“If I’m right about it, it does,” Malloy allowed. “But none of that matters now. What matters is if it gave him a reason to kill her, and I don’t think it did, at least not until they had enough to bankroll him for a Green Goods Game.”

“But they fight all the time,” Serafina insisted.

“Lots of people fight but never kill each other,” he told her. “Beside, they didn’t have enough money to set up his own game yet. When they did, he might have killed her if she refused to go along with him on their original plan. But that hadn’t happened, and he still needed her to keep running the séances.”

“Did he?” Sarah asked.

Malloy frowned. “Did he what?”

“Did he need her to run the séances?” She turned to Serafina. “Could you do the séances without her?”

“I don’t . . . Yes, we could,” she decided. “At first she got clients for me, but after a while, people began to bring their friends and . . . No, we did not need her anymore.”

“So the Professor could have killed her to make sure that she wasn’t around to mess up his plans,” Malloy said.

“Except,” Sarah reminded him with a superior grin, “he wasn’t even in the room when she was killed.”

11

T
HAT EVENING, LONG AFTER M ALLOY AND SAR AH’S mother had left and when Catherine had finally gone reluctantly to bed, Sarah and Serafina had to tell Maeve and Mrs. Ellsworth everything they had discussed earlier in the day. Serafina had chosen not to return to the house on Waverly Place that afternoon as the Professor had asked. Even though she had scheduled clients who might have appeared, she simply couldn’t stand the thought of going back into the room where Mrs. Gittings had died.