Murder On Waverly Place

9

SARAH HAD TO SWALLOW THE BARK OF LAUGHTER THAT rose up in her throat. If she laughed, Serafina would never trust her again. But Serafina wasn’t looking at Sarah at all. She was speaking to Mrs. Ellsworth.

“I have tried to ask them,” she said solemnly, “but they will not speak to me about this.”

“Whyever not?” Mrs. Ellsworth asked, outraged on her new friend’s behalf.

“I do not know. Perhaps Mrs. Gittings is blocking the message because she is angry with me.”

“So how do you propose to find out who really killed this Mrs. Gittings?” Mrs. Ellsworth asked.

Serafina glanced at Sarah. “I do not know.”

Mrs. Ellsworth patted her hand reassuringly. “Well, you’ve come to the right place. Mrs. Brandt is an expert at finding murderers.”

“She is?” Serafina exclaimed as Sarah winced.

“Oh, yes, she’s helped Detective Sergeant Malloy solve dozens of cases.”

“Not dozens,” Sarah protested, although sometimes it did seem like it. “Just a… a few.”

“Then you can help me,” Serafina said with relief. “The spirits have not deserted me at all. They have led me to you.”

Sarah took a seat at the table and passed the sugar bowl to her guests so they could sweeten their tea. “You’ll have to help me before I can help you,” she said. “You have to tell me everything you know about everyone involved. If we have any hope at all of saving Nicola, we must find the real killer.”

“Mrs. Brandt said your Nicola was playing a violin all through the séance, so he couldn’t be the killer,” Mrs. Ellsworth said.

“That is right, he was.”

“How do we know it wasn’t just one of the gramophone records?” Sarah challenged.

“Because we do not have the violin on a record,” Serafina replied. “We do not know what the spirits will say, so Nicola must listen and play music to suit what happens. We can go back to the house so you can see we have no such records. I promise, you will see this is true.”

“He could have been walking around the room in the dark, though, and stabbed Mrs. Gittings while he was playing,” Sarah tried.

“He never comes out of the cabinet,” Serafina insisted.

“That would be very difficult to prove,” Sarah argued.

“But playing a violin takes two hands,” Mrs. Ellsworth pointed out. “How could he hold a knife? And if the room was dark enough that they couldn’t see him, how could he see where Mrs. Gittings was to stab her?”

“Did everyone always sit in the same place at the table?” Sarah asked.

“No,” Serafina said. “I tell them where to sit each time, and she is right, he could not see Mrs. Gittings in the dark.”

But Sarah was pretty sure it would be easy enough to memorize the layout of the room, and if Serafina told people where to sit… Well, finding Mrs. Gittings would certainly be possible. That’s what Malloy would say, anyway.

The sound of running feet distracted them, and Catherine raced into the room to remind them it was time to cook supper. Maeve took charge of the kitchen, and all conversation about murder ceased in deference to Catherine’s tender years.

THE NEXT MORNING, FRANK HAD JUST ARRIVED AT POLICE Headquarters when he got an urgent message from Professor Rogers, asking him to return to the house. Frank was sure Nicola wouldn’t have shown his face there again, which was the only reason he could imagine that the Professor would call him back, but he made the trip down to Waverly Place just in case.

The Professor answered Frank’s knock and ushered him inside after looking around to see if anyone was lurking out on the street.

“The newspapermen were here for hours last night,” the Professor informed him as if he thought it was Frank’s fault.

“Did you tell them anything?”

“No, but the neighbors… I saw them asking people questions.”

“The story was in the evening editions,” Frank told him, “but they don’t have much of it right. If they don’t get wind of who the clients were, they’ll lose interest.”

The Professor sniffed in disdain.

“Is that why you sent for me?” Frank asked in annoyance. “To complain about the newspapermen?”

“No, I want to report a robbery.”

“A robbery? What was stolen?”

“Several thousand dollars,” the Professor reported. Plainly, he was furious and controlling it with great difficulty.

Frank studied him for a long moment. “Is this the money that Mrs. Gittings was holding for Serafina and Nicola?”

“It was all the money,” he said bitterly.

“Where did you keep it?”

“Locked in a safe.”

Frank remembered seeing a safe in the narrow space behind the false wall. “When did you find out it was missing?”

“This morning.”

Frank was growing increasingly irritated with the Professor’s miserly answers. “Show me the safe.”

“It’s in here,” he said, and as Frank expected, he led him to the narrow space behind the false wall.

The morning sun filtered through the curtain, showing the dust motes hanging in the stale air. Frank had noticed the safe in the far end of the space yesterday, but hadn’t given it any particular significance. Now the door hung open, and the safe was clearly empty.

“Is this how you found it?”

“No, it was locked.”

It had been closed when Frank saw it yesterday. “Why did you open it?”

“I… I thought I might need some money.”

Frank wondered idly if the Professor had decided to take the money and disappear himself, before Serafina could lay claim to it. “Who had the combination?”

“Just Mrs. Gittings and myself,” he said.

“Maybe she put the money someplace else,” Frank suggested, thinking she might have put it someplace the Professor couldn’t find it.

“No, it was all there yesterday, right before the séance,” he said. “I collected the fees from everyone and put them into the safe while Madame was greeting the guests, just like I always do, and everything was fine then.”

“Are you sure you locked it?”

“Of course,” the Professor snapped, losing his battle to control his anger. “Don’t you see what happened? That little rat stole it!”

“What little rat? You mean DiLoreto?”

“Of course I mean DiLoreto. Who else could have done it?”

“I thought he didn’t know the combination,” Frank reminded him.

“He’s a sneaky little bastard,” the Professor said through gritted teeth. “Who knows what he knew? Maybe he knows how to crack safes.”

Frank doubted the boy would have been working for a phony spiritualist if he knew how to crack safes, but he decided not to mention that to the Professor. He was already upset enough. “If DiLoreto stole this money… How much was it, again?”

“I don’t know exactly, but it was over five thousand dollars,” the Professor told him, seething at the very thought.

“I saw him right before he ran off,” Frank recalled, picturing the boy in his mind with his slim figure dressed in tightly fitting black clothes, which were ideally suited for slipping into and out of cabinets without catching on corners. “He wasn’t carrying anything, and he couldn’t have had that much money stuffed in his pockets.”

“He must have come back for it last night, while I was asleep. He has a key to the house.”

“That still doesn’t explain how he got into the safe.”

“I told you-”

“I know, he’s a safe cracker. Or maybe you left it unlocked.”

“I didn’t leave it unlocked, I tell you.”

“Have you searched the rest of the house? Just in case Mrs. Gittings put the money someplace else?” Frank prodded.

“I searched,” he said, his face now an alarming shade of purple, “even though she was dead, as you will recall, and couldn’t have put it someplace else.”

“Who else knew the safe was there?”

“Nobody. Just the four of us. No one else ever came into this room.”

“Did Serafina know how to open the safe?”

“No. I told you, we would never have given either of them the combination. If they got the money, they would have run off.”

This was all very interesting, but Frank really didn’t care what had happened to the money. Except that if Nicola had it, they’d never see him again. He probably would have gone back to Italy by now.

“When we find DiLoreto, we’ll ask him about this,” Frank told him.

“And what am I supposed to do in the meantime?” the Professor asked furiously.

Frank wanted to suggest he get an honest job, but he said, “That’s up to you.”

This was not the answer the Professor wanted to hear. “When will Serafina come back? She has clients scheduled today.”

“That’s up to her. I’ll mention it to her when I see her.”

“And what are you going to do about this?” he demanded, gesturing angrily toward the open safe.

“I’ll file a report, and keep looking for DiLoreto.”

The Professor swore a colorful oath that told Frank he wasn’t as cultured as he pretended to be.

Frank decided he wouldn’t wait to visit Sarah’s house. He wanted to find out what Serafina knew about the missing money.

MAEVE OPENED THE DOOR AND GREETED HIM WARMLY, followed by Catherine, who threw herself into his arms.

“I’m getting married,” she informed him when he’d picked her up.

“Who’s the lucky fellow?” Frank asked in amusement.

Catherine giggled. “I’m getting married,” she repeated, holding up one small palm and pointing to a specific spot. “See, right there.”

“Madame Serafina was reading our palms this morning,” Maeve told him with some amusement of her own.

Frank nodded his understanding. “And are you getting married, too, Maeve?”

“Of course,” Maeve assured him with a gleam in her eye the only clue that she wasn’t perfectly serious. “All single young ladies are going to get married. Even Mrs. Brandt,” she added archly.

Before Frank could react to this amazing piece of information, Sarah Brandt called his name.

“Malloy,” she said, coming toward him through the front room. She was smiling the way she always did when she first saw him. Well, almost always. If there was no dead body involved. “You’re out early this morning.”

“I couldn’t wait to see my favorite girl,” he said and watched her eyebrows rise in surprise before turning to Catherine, whom he still held in his arms. “And now she tells me she’s getting married.”

Catherine laughed in delight.

“Have you found Nicola?”

They all turned to where Serafina stood. She’d followed Sarah out of the kitchen and was standing in the middle of the office, her hands clenched tightly at her waist. She looked very different today. She was wearing an ordinary dress instead of that black flowing thing she’d had on yesterday, and her hair was down and tied with a ribbon. She could have been a schoolgirl.

“No, I haven’t,” he said. “I thought the Professor might offer a reward, but it seems someone has stolen all of his money.”

Sarah and Maeve gasped in surprise, but Serafina’s reaction was much milder. She simply lifted her chin, almost defiantly.

“When did this happen?” Sarah asked.

“Sometime between when the séance started yesterday and this morning. The Professor thinks Nicola came back in the night. He has a key to the house.”

“He does not know the combination to the safe,” Serafina said.

“Do you?” Frank asked curiously.

Her dark eyes blazed. “Of course not. Mrs. Gittings, she would never trust us. She was afraid we would take the money and run away.”

“Maeve, why don’t you take Catherine over to visit Mrs. Ellsworth?” Sarah suggested.

Catherine made some inarticulate sounds of protest, but Maeve predicted she would receive a treat at Mrs. Ellsworth’s and promised to bring her back before Mr. Malloy left again. After a few minutes, Maeve had her buttoned into a jacket and out the door.

“Come in and have some coffee with us, Malloy,” Sarah said.

They all filed into the kitchen, and Sarah poured coffee for them. Malloy usually felt comfortable here in Sarah’s kitchen, but Madame Serafina’s unease was affecting them all. She sat stiffly in her chair, making no effort to taste the coffee or even to make eye contact.

“Does Nicola know how to break into a safe?” he asked baldly when the silence had stretched for a while.

“What?” Serafina asked. Plainly, this was not what she’d been expecting to be asked.

“Does he know how to break into a safe?” Frank repeated. “Somebody opened the safe, took the money out, and locked it back up again so the Professor wouldn’t know it was gone until he went looking for it.”

“Nicola does not know anything about safes,” Serafina said.

“Then what happened to the money?”

“How should I know?” Serafina snapped. She was angry. Not as angry as the Professor had been, but still angry. “Maybe he hides the money and pretends it is stolen to get Nicola in more trouble.”

Frank hadn’t considered this possibility, but the Professor had seemed genuinely upset. He’d looked like a man who had been robbed. “What about you?” Frank asked. “Do you know anything about safes?”

She seemed shocked. “No!”

Frank took a sip of his coffee. “If Nicola took the money, he’s probably on his way back to Italy by now,” he observed mildly.

“He will not leave me,” Serafina said with the confidence only young love can produce. Frank noticed she didn’t deny he’d taken the money, though.

He turned to Sarah. “Have you found out anything new?”

“Not really,” she said, glancing at Serafina. “But I did remember something I didn’t tell you yesterday.”

“What’s that?” he asked with a frown.

“I was telling you about Mr. Sharpe, about how I smelled roses when he was talking to his wife’s spirit,” she reminded him. “But before I could tell you everything, you ran out of the room.”

Frank nodded. That was when he’d remembered about the space behind the cabinet and gone to look at it himself. “What else do you know about him?”

“Remember Serafina said he wanted to take her away from Mrs. Gittings and set her up in her own house?” she asked, glancing at Serafina again. “In the séance I attended, he was asking his wife for advice about something, and Serafina told him to follow his heart.”

“I told him nothing!” she protested. “The spirits tell him. I do not even know what they say!”

Sarah ignored her. Obviously, she had forgotten she had confessed to having Yellow Feather tell the clients what Mrs. Gittings wanted them to hear. “He was thinking about doing something dangerous, and Serafina told him not to be afraid.”

“I told him nothing!” Serafina insisted.

“The spirits then,” Sarah conceded generously. “Someone told him not to be afraid and to follow his heart.”

“What was he thinking about doing that was dangerous?” Frank asked Serafina.

“I do not know,” she said sullenly. “You will have to ask him.”

Frank rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Now that’s a problem,” he said, “because Mr. Sharpe is a rich man with powerful friends. I can’t ask him anything, because if I do, I’ll lose my job.”

Serafina looked at him in surprise. “But you are the police.”

People like Serafina, powerless people with no money, were terrified of the police.

“Mr. Malloy is right,” Sarah was saying. “People like Mr. Sharpe and… Well, like all the people at the séance, they don’t have to be afraid of the police.”

“Why not?”

“Because…” Sarah was searching for an explanation the girl could understand.

“Because they have enough money to buy their way out of trouble,” Frank explained for her.

“Is this true?” she asked Sarah, outraged.

“I’m afraid it is.”

“Even if one of them killed Mrs. Gittings?” the girl asked.

“Probably,” Frank said. “No one wants to protect Nicola except you, and the others would be happy to see him charged with the murder, guilty or not, because that would mean they wouldn’t have to worry about any scandal touching them.”

The girl’s eyes filled with tears. “Mrs. Brandt, you cannot let him blame Nicola for this! He is innocent!”

Sarah turned to him with that expression he hated, the one that said she wanted him to do something he didn’t want to do. “Can you at least question them?”

Frank shook his head. “The boy did it. He’s the only one who could have.”

“No, that is not true!” Serafina cried.

“All the others were holding hands,” he reminded her. “If they moved, somebody would have noticed.”

“But what if one of the people on either side of Mrs. Gittings did it?” Sarah said too eagerly. “One of them could have let go of her hand, and before she could say anything, he stabbed her.”

“He?” Frank asked.

“Mr. Sharpe was on her left,” Sarah said. “He was thinking about doing something dangerous.”

Frank glared at her.

“Mrs. Burke was on the other side of her,” Serafina added. “Mrs. Gittings would not let her come back to see me again until she brought more money.”

“She was selling her jewelry,” Sarah reminded him. “And she was afraid her husband would find out.”

Frank didn’t want to hear any of this. “That’s far-fetched,” he tried.

“There is another way,” Serafina said.

They both looked at her in surprise.

“Another way to what?” Sarah asked.

“To… to free your hand,” she admitted reluctantly.

“What do you mean?” Frank asked, figuring this was some kind of trick, a desperate attempt to cast suspicion on anybody but DiLoreto.

“Please, put your hands on the table,” she said, moving the coffee cups aside as Frank and Sarah each laid their palms on the tabletop.

Serafina reached across with her left hand and took Frank’s right wrist. “Please, hold Mrs. Brandt’s wrist with your other hand,” she instructed him.

Frank took Sarah’s right wrist with his left hand, and she in turn clasped Serafina’s right wrist with her left hand.

“This is how we hold our hands when the lights are on,” Serafina said. “Then I get up and turn out the light and close the door.” She pulled her hands free of theirs, as if she were getting up. “When I come back,” she continued. “Sometimes I do this.”

She kept her right hand off the table, and offered her left wrist to Sarah, who clasped it, and then she clasped Frank’s wrist with the same hand.

“In the dark, you will not see this,” she said, pointing to the way they were both clasping the same one of her hands. “And I have one hand free to…” She raised her hand as if she held an invisible knife and brought it down toward Sarah, who instinctively recoiled.

Frank jerked his own hand away and glared at her. “But nobody would know how to do that except you.”

“Mr. Cunningham knows how,” she said. “He told me he knew that I sometimes keep one hand free. He was very proud he had figured this out.”

“But he was too far away to stab Mrs. Gittings,” Frank said.

“If he figured it out, the others could have, too,” Sarah said.

Frank frowned at her. “The DiLoreto boy still had the best reason to want her dead,” he reminded her. “The Professor said she wanted to get rid of him. They had a fight about it the night before she died.”

“But she said he could stay,” Serafina argued. “I told her I would leave with him if she sent him away.”

The Professor had said the same thing, so that part was true, at least. “But he might have thought if he killed her-”

“No!” Serafina interrupted in frustration. “If he killed her, we would be telling fortunes on the street again.”

“Not if Sharpe set you up in a house like he wanted to,” Frank reminded her.

“But Nicola could not come with me. And if Mrs. Gittings was dead, we would have nothing.”

“Except her money,” Frank tried. “With her dead, Nicola could come back and steal the money-”

“No, no!” she cried. “He stole it before she died!”

Frank and Sarah gaped at her as she clapped a hand over her mouth, aghast at what she had just said.

“Nicola stole the money?” Frank asked, using his police detective’s tone.

Her eyes widened in terror. “It was really our money,” she said. “I had earned it, but she would not give it to us. She would give us nothing!”

“How did he steal it? You said you didn’t know the combination to the safe,” Sarah said.

“We… we made a small hole in the wall so we could watch when she opened the safe,” she admitted. “We were waiting until the end of the month, before she paid the rent, so…” She gestured vaguely.

“So there’d be more money to steal,” Frank offered.

“But it’s not the end of the month yet,” Sarah pointed out.

“After the fight with Mrs. Gittings, we decided we could not wait,” Serafina said.

“Exactly when did he take the money?” Frank asked.

“Yesterday, right after everyone arrived for the séance. The Professor locks the money in the safe, then he comes to the parlor to help me escort people into the séance room. Nicola took the money from the safe when the Professor and Mrs. Gittings were with me and the clients in the parlor and… and he hid it.”

“Where did he hide it?” Frank asked.

“He… In my bedroom,” she admitted reluctantly. “In my carpet bag.”

“Oh,” Sarah said in surprise. Frank glanced at her questioningly. “I noticed that she was very protective of the bag on the trip over here,” she explained.

“So you have it here with you?” Frank asked.

“Yes, but it is mine! I earned it!” she cried, her face crumbling.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to take it,” Frank assured her. “I just wanted to know where it was. So DiLoreto took the money before the séance even started.”

“Yes, that was our plan. Then we were going to wait until they were asleep that night, Mrs. Gittings and the Professor, and we would run away together.”

“Where were you going to go?” Sarah asked.

“To another city,” Serafina explained, leaning forward in her desperation to make them understand. “With the money, we could rent a house and I could do readings and we would not need Mrs. Gittings anymore. So you see, we did not need to kill her.”

“And killing her would just complicate things for them,” Sarah pointed out, earning another frown from Frank. “Why would they want to upset the clients or get the police involved? If they killed her, they were bound to get caught.”

The timing of the theft of the money was exactly right. The Professor had said it was all there when he put in the fees for the séance. Nicola had no opportunity to hide it after the séance started because he was busy making the background noises, and after the murder, the house was full of cops who would have noticed him carrying a sack of money around. And he couldn’t have come back and stolen it later, because Serafina had it with her when she left the house.

“Nicola did not kill her, Mr. Malloy,” Serafina said again. “Please, you must believe me.”

“Can’t you at least question the other people at the séance to see if you can figure out what really happened?” Sarah asked again. “If the boy is innocent, you can’t let him hang.”

Frank sighed in defeat. “I might be able to talk to each of them once,” he admitted grudgingly, “if I say I’m trying to collect more evidence against DiLoreto and if they’ll let me in at all. But if they refuse to talk to me, I can’t force them. And…” he continued when Sarah started to look hopeful, “I can’t treat them like criminals.”

“What does that mean?” Serafina asked Sarah.

“It means he has to be polite and not make them angry,” Sarah said.

“Which means they might not tell me the truth,” Frank said. “Especially the one who killed her, if one of them did. And unless one of them confesses to killing Mrs. Gittings, I won’t be able to arrest any of them even if I’m sure they did it.”

“But at least you’ll know Nicola is innocent,” Sarah said.

“And you will let him go free,” Serafina added, her lovely eyes full of hope.

How did Frank let Sarah get him into this? He’d had a perfectly good suspect that nobody would care anything about except this girl whom nobody would care anything about, but now he was going to have to go uptown and bother people who never got bothered by the police because they were too important. And with Roosevelt gone, he had no one to stand up for him if one of these important people got offended and wanted him fired.

He looked up to find Sarah studying him as if trying to read his thoughts. She opened her mouth to say something, but the sound of her doorbell distracted them. Sarah got up to answer it.

While they waited for her, Frank said to Serafina, “The Professor said to tell you that you’ve got clients scheduled today. He wanted to know if you were coming back to see them.”

“He is worried about money,” she sniffed derisively.

“He should be,” Frank said. “You didn’t leave him any.”

She didn’t look very repentant. “Maybe I should go back,” she said after a moment. “Just in case someone comes to see me.”

“And in case DiLoreto comes looking for you,” Frank suggested.

She looked up in surprise. “I… I did not think of that.”

“Yes, you did,” Frank said. “He’ll be wondering where you are.”

Frank heard a familiar voice, and he rose as Sarah returned to the kitchen with her mother.

“Mr. Malloy, it’s so good to see you,” she said in greeting, but her gaze went immediately to Serafina. “How are you, my dear?”

Serafina burst into tears, which immediately won the sympathy of both women, who rushed to comfort her. Frank stood back, watching for any sign that Serafina’s outburst was faked to distract Frank from thoughts of DiLoreto. She’d managed real tears, he noted, lending an air of authenticity to her outburst.

“What have you been doing to her?” Mrs. Decker demanded of him.

“Nothing, Mother,” Sarah assured her. “We’ve just been discussing the reasons Nicola couldn’t have murdered Mrs. Gittings.”

“Not couldn’t,” Frank corrected her. “Wouldn’t.”

All three women gave him black looks.

“Did she at least convince you that he’s innocent?” Mrs. Decker asked.

“She convinced me it’s possible,” Frank admitted.

“The problem,” Sarah said quickly, before her mother could respond, “is that Mr. Malloy will be risking his job if he goes to question the others at the séance who might have had a reason to murder Mrs. Gittings.”

“How would he be risking his job?” Mrs. Decker asked.

“Think about it, Mother,” Sarah said. “What would Father do if a police detective came to your house to question you about a murder?”

Mrs. Decker only needed a moment to imagine the scene. Felix Decker would have used all of his power and influence to make sure such a thing never happened again. “Oh, dear.”

“Exactly.”

“But Theodore-” she tried, obviously remembering how their old family friend, Mr. Roosevelt, had always supported Malloy’s efforts.

“Theodore has resigned as police commissioner,” Sarah said. “He’s going to Washington to be assistant secretary of something or other.”

“The Navy,” Frank supplied helpfully.

“The Navy?” Mrs. Decker echoed in astonishment. “What does Theodore know about the Navy?”

“Who is Theodore?” Serafina asked tearfully.

“No one, dear, it doesn’t matter,” Mrs. Decker said, dismissing the brand-new assistant secretary of the Navy with a wave of her hand. “But if Mr. Malloy can’t question these people, how are we to determine what really happened to poor Mrs. Gittings?”

“We were just discussing that when you arrived,” Sarah explained. “And I was going to offer my own services. I could call on them and question them myself.”

“No, you can’t,” Frank protested, and he was gratified when Mrs. Decker confirmed it.

“Oh, no, my dear, you couldn’t possibly,” she said. “I’m sure they would refuse to see you, under the circumstances. But,” she added archly, “I’m sure they would all be more than glad to welcome me. We can visit them together.”