Murder on Waverly Place (27 page)

“But if he didn’t know he’d been cheated, why would he have wanted to kill Mrs. Gittings?” Sarah asked.

“Because she wouldn’t give him Serafina,” Malloy said baldly. “He wanted her, and he was angry because Mrs. Gittings wanted him to give her money. After he lost what money he had on the phony investment, he was starting to feel desperate.”

“Did you ask him about freeing his hands during the séance?” Sarah asked.

“Yes. He pretended he didn’t know the trick, but he’s not a very good liar. That still doesn’t prove he did it, though.”

“What about Mr. Sharpe?” Sarah asked with a glance at Serafina. She was staring blankly out the window now. Sarah wasn’t sure she was even listening to them anymore.

“He was just as angry at Mrs. Gittings. She wasn’t going to let him take Serafina either. She wasn’t going to lose her meal ticket.”

“Was he angry enough to kill Mrs. Gittings?”

“If he was, he didn’t let on. He’s too smart for that. So what about you? Did you find out anything from Mrs. Burke?”

“Just that she hated Mrs. Gittings, too. And she was terrified that her husband was going to find out she’d been selling her jewelry to pay for the séances.”

“We already knew that,” Malloy reminded her.

“Yes, but we didn’t know she was actually giving the jewelry to Mrs. Gittings to sell for her. She said she thought Mrs. Gittings was cheating her.”

“She probably was,” Malloy said. “Did she say anything else?”

“Not much before she fainted,” Sarah said dryly.

“She fainted?”
Malloy and Serafina echoed in unison. At least Serafina was listening again.

“Yes, she did. Apparently, talking about Mrs. Gittings’s murder upsets her, although Mother thinks she might have been pretending. According to her, ladies often use a fainting spell to end an unpleasant scene.”

“Really?” Serafina asked with credible disbelief, but when Sarah looked at her, she saw a knowing gleam in her eye. That’s when she remembered how Serafina had fainted at the séance she’d attended.

“Yes, really,” Sarah confirmed with a grim smile of her own.

“Didn’t she tell you
anything
you didn’t know before?” Malloy prodded.

“Just that Mrs. Gittings and the Professor seemed angry with each other that day. She thought they must have had an argument.”

“Did they?” Malloy asked Serafina.

“Yes, I told you, they argued every day. He wanted to use the money from the séances to do something else, but she wanted to keep doing the séances. It was so easy, she said, and so safe.”

“Did she think what the Professor wanted to do wasn’t safe?” Sarah asked curiously.

“It was dangerous, she said. She said it many times, but he would not listen. He kept saying how much money they would have.”

“What does it matter?” Malloy asked impatiently. “The Professor wasn’t even in the room when she was killed, remember?”

“Are you absolutely sure he wasn’t?” Sarah asked, including both of them in the question.

“I did not see him,” Serafina said with a shrug.

“And neither did anybody else,” Malloy added. “I asked all of them when they saw him after the murder, and he was in the doorway, so he must have just come in.”

“When did they see him come into the room?” Serafina asked with a frown, surprising both of them with her interest.

“Nobody was really sure,” Malloy said. “They didn’t notice him until they started to leave the room. I guess he came when you called for him and was just standing there, trying to figure out what had happened while everybody else was looking at Mrs. Gittings.”

Serafina frowned, as if this information displeased her somehow.

Sarah sighed. “That’s really too bad. It would so nice if he was the killer.”

“Yes, it would,” Malloy agreed. Sarah knew he was thinking of the difficulties he would face if one of Serafina’s wealthy clients was guilty.

“Yes, it would,” Serafina echoed, and Sarah knew she was thinking of Nicola.

But if Nicola was dead, none of this would matter, because protecting Nicola was the only reason they had for finding the real killer.

 

 

 

W
HEN THE CARRIAGE STOPPED IN FRONT OF THE MORGUE, Serafina looked out the carriage window with dread. “What will I have to do?” she asked Malloy.

“I’ll take you down to where the . . . where the boy is. He’ll be covered with a sheet. You won’t have to look at his face if you don’t want to.”

“I don’t,” she assured him apprehensively.

“Did he have any birthmarks?”

“I do not know what that is,” Serafina said, looking to Sarah for help.

“Any marks on his body that you would recognize,” Sarah explained.

“I would know his hands,” Serafina said. “And his feet.”

“Then Mr. Malloy will show you the hands and the feet,” Sarah promised.

Malloy frowned, but he got out of the carriage and helped them down. Sarah put her arm around the girl as they entered the building and found she was trembling again. This must be terrifying for her, Sarah thought. When they were inside, Malloy spoke to someone sitting at a desk in a voice too low for them to hear. Then a young man in a cheap suit that was stained with things Sarah didn’t want to identify came out and led them down a flight of stairs to a large room furnished with several metal tables and lots of strange-looking equipment. She had seen autopsies at the hospital during her training, but she’d never been to a morgue. The smell brought the gorge up in her throat, and she swallowed it down hard, refusing to be sick.

Something shaped like a human body lay on one of the tables, covered by a sheet.

“I don’t want to see the face,” Serafina reminded him anxiously, her eyes wild with fright.

“You don’t have to,” Malloy said. He spoke to the young man again, and he carefully lifted the sheet on the side of the table nearest them. They could see a bare arm.

Serafina moved closer and looked down at the hand. The knuckles were badly skinned and the nails broken. He had fought for his life. She stared at the hand for a long moment. “Can I see his feet?” she asked. She sounded amazingly calm. She was probably in shock.

The young man covered the arm again and moved to the end of the table and lifted the sheet to reveal the bare feet. The toenails were long and unkempt. The body had been washed, but dirt was still embedded in the nails. Blisters reddened the small toes of both feet.

“Could you . . . Could I see his back,” she asked so softly they could hardly hear her.

The young man looked annoyed, but a glance at Malloy convinced him not to object. “Can you give me a hand, Mr. Malloy?” he asked instead.

Sarah and Serafina turned away while the two men struggled to lift the body. She thought she heard the young man say, “He’s stiff.”

“All right,” Malloy said after another moment, and when they looked, they saw the dead man’s bare back. The sheet had been draped to cover the buttocks. Malloy and the young man were holding the body balanced on its side. Rigor mor tis was still present, and the body seemed carved of stone. Sarah could clearly see a large, brown birthmark on the left shoulder blade.

The girl made a whimpering sound.

“Serafina?” Sarah asked anxiously.

Serafina sounded for a moment as if she couldn’t breathe, and then the awful choking noises collapsed upon themselves into wracking sobs that convulsed her young body.

“Is it Nicola?” Malloy asked, shouting to be heard.

“Yes, yes!” she cried, and ran from the room.

Sarah hurried after her and found her slumped on the stairs, sobbing.

“Come upstairs,” Sarah coaxed her. “We’ll find someplace quiet and—”

“No, no, take me out of this place!” she begged, lurching to her feet. “Please, I cannot stay here.”

“Of course,” Sarah said and helped her up the stairs and out into the street, where the Decker carriage waited in silent splendor. The driver jumped down and helped them inside. Although he’d been trained not to show emotion, even he seemed moved by the girl’s anguished grief.

“I’m so sorry,” Sarah said, wrapping her arms around the girl’s slender body and pulling her close. She held her while she wept out her pain, and by the time Malloy had finished his business inside and rejoined them, she was exhausted and drained and lay limp in Sarah’s arms.

Malloy instructed the driver to return them to Sarah’s house. The trip back was conducted in near silence, but when they were almost there, Serafina pulled away from Sarah and sat upright, her spine suddenly rigid.

“Nicola did not kill Mrs. Gittings,” she told them both.

“We know he didn’t,” Sarah assured her, earning a black look from Malloy.

When Malloy didn’t confirm her sentiments, Serafina turned her marvelous eyes on him. “But you will stop looking for the killer now, will you not?”

“I told you before, I can only question those people once.

Cunningham and Sharpe didn’t confess, and Mrs. Burke fainted. The Professor is the only other person there, and he wasn’t in the room. There isn’t much more I can do.”

“Nicola is not a killer. I will not let people think he is.” Sarah knew that few people would think about Nicola DiLoreto at all, but she didn’t want to upset Serafina again by saying so. She would broach the subject later, when the girl was calmer. “We know he was innocent,” she tried. “That’s what’s important.”

“No, finding the real killer is important,” Serafina said.

“Do you know who it is?” Malloy asked with great interest.

“I will find out,” Serafina said with perfect confidence. “The spirits will tell me.”

Malloy ran a hand over his face to hide his exasperation. “When they do,” he said when he’d recovered his composure, “let me know.”

And just as if he’d made a perfectly logical request, she said, “I will.”

 

 

 

B
ACK AT SARAH’S HOUSE, MRS. DECKER AND MAEVE WERE saddened to learn that the dead man really was Nicola. Even Catherine offered her sympathies by climbing into Serafina’s lap and wrapping her small arms around the girl’s neck.

Maeve made tea for everyone and set out cookies that she and Catherine had made while they were gone, but Malloy declined the offer and took his leave. Sarah saw him to the door, and when they were alone, he said, “I’m sorry you had to go to that place.”

“I didn’t mind. I couldn’t let her face that alone.”

“I was hoping it wasn’t him,” he confessed. “At least part of me was. The other part hoped it was, because I’m still convinced he was the one who killed Mrs. Gittings.”

“So this is the end of the investigation, I suppose.”

“Unless something turns up to change my mind,” he told her with an apologetic shrug.

“At least Serafina won’t have to see Nicola tried for murder.”

“Or executed,” Malloy added grimly.

Someone knocked on Sarah’s front door. “Oh, dear, I hope it isn’t a delivery,” she muttered. “After the day I’ve had, I’m not in any condition to do one right now.”

Malloy stood back so she could open the door, and they were both surprised to see John Sharpe standing on her doorstep.

“Mrs. Brandt, please forgive me for intruding,” Sharpe said while he was pushing his way into the house, belying his apology even as he was making it. “I was told . . . What are
you
doing here?” he demanded when he saw Malloy.

“I could ask you the same question,” Malloy said mildly.

“I have some business with Madame Serafina,” he informed them both. “I was told she is here.”

“Who told you that?” Malloy asked with interest.

“Professor Rogers was kind enough to give me the information. He’s been quite worried about her, and he asked if I could locate Mrs. Brandt and make sure Madame Serafina is all right.”

“She’s just fine,” Malloy told him, “so you can be on your way.”

Sharpe gave him a look that had probably intimidated many underlings and a multitude of servants, but it didn’t phase Malloy, who gave it right back. “I told you,” Sharpe tried indignantly, “I have business with Madame Serafina.”

“What kind of business?” Malloy insisted.

“Mr. Sharpe,” Serafina said, surprising them all. While they had been arguing, she had come out and stood just inside the office doorway. She still wore the clothes she had worn to the morgue, the ones that made her look like an ordinary young woman, but something about her had changed ever so subtly now that Sharpe was here, Sarah noticed. She carried herself differently, and her voice was lower, more sensual. “How kind of you to come.”

“Madame Serafina,” he said, brushing past Sarah and Frank to meet her as she crossed Sarah’s office, coming toward them. “How are you? You look like you’ve been crying,” he added with a glance of accusation at Sarah and Malloy.

“I am still mourning poor Mrs. Gittings,” she said without a trace of irony. “She was like a mother to me. I do not know how I can go on without her.” She held out her hand, and he grasped it eagerly with both of his.

“But you must!” Sharpe said. “Your work is too important. That’s why I’ve come, to make sure you can continue.”

“You are very good to me.” The look she gave him would have melted a much stronger man than John Sharpe.

Sarah suddenly realized that with Mrs. Gittings and Nicola both dead, Serafina was now free to take any of the offers that Mrs. Gittings had refused on her behalf. Sharpe’s offer to set her up in a house of her own had certainly been the most attractive and by far the most honorable.

“Mr. Sharpe,” Mrs. Decker greeted him as she came into the room as well.

Sharpe looked up in surprise and instantly dropped Serafina’s hand, as if he had been caught doing something unseemly. “Mrs. Decker, what are you doing here?”

“I’m visiting my daughter, Mr. Sharpe, and I must admit I’m amazed to see you here. However did you find us?”