Murder On Waverly Place

7

SERAFINA BROKE FREE OF THE COP WHO WAS HOLDING HER and ran to where Frank and Sarah stood in the hallway. “They all wanted her dead, I tell you! She was taking money from all of them!”

Before Frank could make sense of this, the cop who’d released Serafina opened the front door to the orderlies from the coroner’s office who had come for the body. Nobody saw exactly what happened next, but in that one instant of distraction, Nicola slipped out of Donatelli’s grasp and ran out the front door.

Someone swore and all the uniformed cops, including Donatelli, ran after him, but the orderlies were in the way, and they all got tangled up, and in those precious few seconds while they got untangled, Nicola disappeared, as Frank learned a few minutes later when they returned empty-handed.

“I swear, I don’t know how he got loose,” Donatelli said for at least the hundredth time. The other cops were sure he’d let the fellow Italian go. They were all gathered in the office, glaring at him and hoping he’d get all the blame.

O’Toole snorted in disgust, but Frank said, “I know you didn’t.” Donatelli would have been the last one to let him go, just because if he did, everyone would suspect him of doing it on purpose. “Go down to Little Italy and see what you can find out about him. He probably has friends there who would hide him. Drop some hints about a reward and see if they’ll give him up.”

Donatelli nodded and left, determined to find the boy if he had to search every tenement in New York City, Frank knew.

He looked at O’Toole, who plainly thought Frank had made a botch of this whole thing. “Have your men search the neighborhood again. Maybe somebody saw where he went,” Frank told the other detective.

“Now that your suspect is gone, do you need anybody to stay here to help?” O’Toole asked, sarcasm thick in his voice.

“Leave somebody on the front door in case the press show up,” Frank said sharply enough to remind O’Toole who was in charge. “But you can go.”

O’Toole sniffed derisively and left, barking orders to his men out in the hallway. After a few minutes, the front door opened and closed, and the house fell eerily silent. Frank rose wearily and made his way across the hall to the parlor, where Sarah and her mother still waited with Madame Serafina.

When he stepped through the door, the girl rose from where she’d been sitting on the sofa between Sarah and her mother. “Did they find him?” she asked anxiously.

“Not yet,” Frank said, giving nothing away. “Do you have any idea where he’d go?”

Her expression told him clearly she had no intention of saying so, if she did. “He did not kill her,” she said instead.

“Then who did?” Frank challenged.

“I told you, all of them wanted her dead,” she insisted.

“All of them?” Frank echoed. “You mean all the people at the séance?”

She lifted her chin in defiance. “Yes.”

Frank glanced meaningfully at Mrs. Decker.

“Not Mrs. Decker,” she amended quickly. “She was new, and Mrs. Gittings had not started trying to get money from her yet.”

“Mrs. Brandt,” Frank said. “You and Mrs. Decker should leave. The press will be getting wind of this any minute now, and when they do… Well, you know what will happen.”

Sarah knew only too well. “Mother,” she began, but Madame Serafina interrupted her.

“Please, do not go,” Serafina begged Sarah. She seemed genuinely frightened.

“Mr. Malloy won’t hurt you, child,” Mrs. Decker assured her.

“He has to arrest someone for this,” Serafina pointed out, “and Nicola is gone. Please, stay with me!”

Sarah shrugged helplessly, and Frank sighed in defeat. He turned one of the armchairs to face the sofa and sat down, wishing he could put his feet up. “All right, tell me why you think these other people wanted to kill Mrs. Gittings.”

The girl sat back down, her expression wary. She was a pretty little thing, he noticed, and those eyes, they could look right through you. She was trying to look through him right now. He gave her no encouragement.

“Mrs. Gittings charged a lot of money for the séances, but she said…” She glanced at Mrs. Decker uneasily and then went on. “She said that was just the beginning. She said these people had so much money that they would not miss a little bit more, so she figured out ways to get more.”

“How did she do that?” Frank asked with interest. He’d known the séance was a confidence game, but he hadn’t imagined there was more to it than just taking money to let people talk to their dead relatives.

“She would do different things for different people. She would find out things about them and then figure out the best way to get their money.”

“Was she getting money from all the other people who were here today?” Sarah asked.

Frank gave her a glare designed to silence her, but she didn’t even notice.

“Yes, she had a plan for each of them.”

“What was she doing?” Frank asked before Sarah could.

Plainly, Serafina hated to reveal these secrets. She looked down to where her hands were twisting in her lap.

“It’s all right,” Mrs. Decker said, putting an arm around her. “It’s not your fault.”

Frank wasn’t so sure about that, but he didn’t say so. No reason to discourage the girl from talking. “What was she doing to Mrs. Burke?”

“Mrs. Burke did not have as much money as Mrs. Gittings hoped,” Serafina replied. “At least she could not get any from her husband after the first few times. He did not like her going to séances, and he refused to give her any more money for them, not even to pay for the regular sittings.”

“But she was here every week,” Mrs. Decker said. “How was she paying for it?”

“She was… selling things. Jewelry, I think,” she admitted reluctantly.

Sarah’s eyes grew wide, and her expression told Frank she knew something about this. She opened her mouth to say it, but Frank gave her a quick shake of the head. He didn’t want to interrupt the girl.

“To raise money so she could keep coming to the séances,” Frank guessed.

“Yes, and Mrs. Gittings would arrange private sittings for her, too, when she could pay for them. But she was getting frightened, Mrs. Burke, I mean. She was afraid her husband would find out what she was doing. He would have been very angry.”

“He most certainly would,” Mrs. Decker confirmed grimly.

“Mrs. Burke had an argument with Mrs. Gittings last week,” Serafina said. “She thought Mrs. Gittings was charging her too much for the sittings, and she said she had no more jewelry to sell.”

“Why didn’t she just stop coming?” Frank asked quite reasonably, or so he thought.

“She could not,” Serafina told him. “That is the secret, you see. I only tell them just enough so they must come back again to hear the rest.”

“And the next time, you tell them a little more and then a little more,” Frank guessed.

“Yes, that is it,” she said, relieved that he understood. She turned to Mrs. Decker. “I am sorry, but that is what she made me do.”

Mrs. Decker looked too shocked to reply, but Serafina didn’t seem to notice.

“I guess Mrs. Gittings wouldn’t lower the price for Mrs. Burke,” Frank said, drawing the girl’s attention back to him.

“Oh, no. In fact, she raised it. Mrs. Burke was furious.”

“I’m sure she was,” Mrs. Decker said, outraged on the other woman’s behalf.

“I had no part in this, you understand,” the girl said, and Frank assured her that he did.

“So what about Cunningham and Sharpe?” he asked.

“Albert, Mr. Cunningham, he was in love with me,” she admitted a little reluctantly.

Frank had seen that clearly. “Was she charging him for that?” he asked sarcastically.

She stiffened. “I am not for sale, Mr. Malloy.”

“I’m sure Mr. Malloy didn’t mean that,” Sarah said, giving him a black look.

“No, I didn’t,” Frank agreed. “I mean, was she charging him more to come back because she knew he was in love with you?”

“No, she… He had inherited a lot of money when his father died last year, but he didn’t know much about business. Mrs. Gittings and the Professor arranged for him to invest some of it with a friend of theirs.”

This was getting more interesting now. “Invest? What do you mean by that?”

Serafina’s lovely mouth thinned down with disgust. “I told him… I mean, Yellow Feather told him about some investments he should make. He would do anything his father told him to do, so I told him that his father wanted him to make these investments.”

“But this friend was a fake, wasn’t he?” Frank guessed.

“I do not know what they did,” Serafina claimed. “All I know is that Mr. Cunningham had lost a lot of money, and Mrs. Gittings said that Yellow Feather had to tell him to invest even more.”

Frank could see Sarah’s expression out of the corner of his eye. She looked as if she was about to explode. She knew things Frank needed to know, but at least she understood the importance of staying quiet at this moment. “Do you think he’d figured out that Mrs. Gittings was cheating him?”

“I do not know, but he was getting very frightened, too. Mrs. Gittings had tried to talk to him, to convince him everything would be all right, but he was angry with her, I know.”

“That leaves Mr. Sharpe,” Frank recalled. “Is he in love with you, too?”

Serafina folded her hands primly. “You will have to ask him about that,” she said.

“Why was he angry with Mrs. Gittings, then?”

“Because he… he wanted to be my sponsor.”

“What does that mean?” Frank asked, thinking he knew but not wanting to make a mistake about it.

“He wanted to buy me a house and support me so I did not have to see other clients. He wanted me all to himself, you see.”

“To be his mistress?” Sarah said before Frank could figure out how to ask it.

“Oh, no,” Serafina assured her. “He just… He believes so strongly, you see. He thought it was wrong that I had to charge people money. He said he would take care of me so I could use my gifts to… to help people.”

Frank thought that sounded a little fishy, but he let it pass, for now. “I don’t suppose Mrs. Gittings liked that idea much.”

“Oh, no,” the girl said. “But you see, he did not know she was already my sponsor, not at first. He came to me and made me this offer, and I had to tell him that… Well, that she would never allow it.”

“So he knew Mrs. Gittings was never going to let you go,” Frank said.

“Yes,” she agreed eagerly. “So you see, all of them had a reason to kill her.”

Of course, Frank just had her word for it, and he was pretty sure none of these very rich, powerful people would confirm any of this, especially if it implicated them in a murder. He risked a glance at Sarah, and he could see she also understood the situation perfectly. Justice wasn’t blind where rich people were concerned. She looked out for them very carefully and overlooked much more.

“But dear,” Mrs. Decker was saying, “none of them could have killed Mrs. Gittings. We were all holding each other by the wrist, remember? Someone would have known if one of us let go to… Well, to do murder.”

Serafina’s lovely face twisted in anguish. “I… Yes, but… There are ways…”

“What ways?” Frank asked with interest when she hesitated.

But she closed her mouth and shook her head in silent refusal.

“The Professor said Nicola was hiding in the cabinet during the séance,” Frank said, surprising her. “What was he doing there?”

The girl licked her lips, plainly trying to figure out whether to tell the truth or not. “He… He helps me.”

“How does he help?” Frank asked.

She hated this. “He makes sounds sometimes.”

“What kinds of sounds?” Frank asked.

“Just… Today he was playing a fiddle, just scraping the bow to make strange sounds.”

“That’s what I heard,” Mrs. Decker remembered. “I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was making that sound.”

“And the noise comes from inside the cabinet,” Sarah said, “which is why they sound so strange and far away.”

Serafina was looking at her, twisting her hands again. She hated betraying her secrets. She nodded.

“Oh, dear!” Mrs. Decker said suddenly.

Everyone looked at her, but she was looking at Frank, her expression awestruck. “Don’t you see, Mr. Malloy? This boy Nicola, if he was playing a violin… I heard that sound the whole time we were talking to Yellow Feather.”

Frank frowned, not seeing at all.

She leaned forward in her eagerness to make him understand. “He was in the cabinet, playing the music, the whole time… the whole time Mrs. Gittings was being murdered. If he was playing the music, he couldn’t possibly have killed her!”

THE CORONER’S MEN HAD LONG SINCE REMOVED MRS. GITTINGS’S body, so Sarah felt no hesitation to enter the séance room. She looked around, trying to picture the scene when Mrs. Gittings had been killed.

“All right, what is it you need to tell me?” Malloy asked, closing the door behind him.

“She’s telling the truth,” Sarah said. “Madame Serafina, I mean. I’m sure Mrs. Gittings must have been doing all those things she said.”

“How do you know?” He frowned suspiciously, the way he always did. She supposed he had good reason to be suspicious most of the time, but certainly not of her.

“Because of what happened at the séance I attended, the things Yellow Feather said to them.”

Malloy crossed his arms over his broad chest in silent challenge. “What did he say?”

“He said… I know it sounds odd, but it was so easy to believe someone else was saying it and not Serafina. Her voice changed completely when Yellow Feather was supposed to be talking. I wonder how she does that.”

“You can ask her later,” he said impatiently. “What did this voice say?”

“Let me see if I can remember exactly,” she said, closing her eyes so she could imagine herself back in time on that day. “Mother could probably remember, too. First of all, Mrs. Burke. Mrs. Burke’s sister and her mother-their spirits, that is-were telling her something about a diamond brooch.”

“Jewelry,” Malloy remembered. “Did they tell her to sell it?”

“Not right out,” Sarah said. “It didn’t make any sense to me then, of course. I had no idea why Mrs. Burke seemed so upset when Yellow Feather mentioned this brooch that her mother had given her. She said it had been in the family forever, but her mother told her something about it was all right.”

“What would have been all right?”

“I’m just guessing, of course, but it seems likely that she was telling Mrs. Burke it was all right to sell this family heirloom. If her mother had given it to her, she probably didn’t want to sell it, so Mrs. Gittings would have told Serafina to encourage her to do it.”

“How did she even know about it?” Malloy asked skeptically.

That was a good question. “I have no idea. Perhaps we can ask Serafina.”

He gave her one of those looks that made her feel hopelessly naïve.

“Serafina wants to protect Nicola,” she reminded him. “And she doesn’t have to protect Mrs. Gittings anymore.”

He shrugged. “What about the others? Did she say anything to them?”

Sarah closed her eyes again. “Cunningham,” she recalled, opening her eyes to find Malloy staring at her with unsettling intensity. “He was very anxious to contact his father.”

“Did he?”

“No,” Sarah remembered, “not that day, although he asked for him several times. It was almost as if…”

“As if what?” he prodded.

“As if she was tormenting him. That must be what Serafina meant when she says she only tells them a little each time so they’ll keep coming back.”

“And if Cunningham didn’t hear anything at all, he’d have to come back,” Malloy guessed.

“That seems cruel,” Sarah mused.

“The whole thing is cruel,” Malloy reminded her. “She can’t talk to the dead any more than I can.”

He was right, of course, but she wasn’t going to say so. “But Cunningham did keep asking questions. Something about needing his father’s advice. He was afraid his father would be angry, although he said that he’d done exactly what his father had told him, and it hadn’t worked out.”

“That could have been the investments Serafina was talking about.”

“Yes, Yellow Feather probably told him his father wanted him to make these investments, and when he lost money, he’d be afraid his father would be angry, and of course then he’d need more advice.”

Malloy nodded. At least he wasn’t looking down his nose anymore. “What about Sharpe?”

“He was speaking to his wife,” Sarah said, and then she remembered something else that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

“What is it?” Malloy demanded, seeing her reaction.

“I just remembered, Yellow Feather said someone-one of the spirits-had a rose. Sharpe said that was his wife, that he’d always given her roses for their anniversary.”

“What’s so surprising about that?”

Sarah felt a chill at the memory. “I could smell roses!”

“It was your imagination,” he scoffed.

“No, no it wasn’t. I could really smell them. It was faint at first, but then, I was almost sick from the scent, it was so strong. Mother smelled it, too.”

“Another one of Nicola’s tricks, probably,” Malloy said.

Sarah looked around, trying to figure it out. “Did Serafina say Nicola was in the cabinet?” she asked, walking over to it.

“The Professor said it.”

“Where is the Professor?” she asked, reaching for the knobs on the cabinet doors.

“Still in the dining room where I sent him after Nicola escaped, I guess,” he said.

Sarah pulled the cabinet open. She’d half expected to find a violin lying there, but the cabinet was completely empty. “It’s big enough for someone Nicola’s size to sit in,” she noted.

“But wouldn’t somebody open it, just to make sure nobody was inside?” Malloy asked.

“Nobody did the day I was here, but I suppose that’s always a possibility. If they saw Nicola in there, the whole scheme would collapse.” Sarah turned to see Malloy pulling open the door to the hallway. “Where are you going?” she asked, but he was gone.

Sarah hurried after him. He pushed open the door at the end of the hallway and disappeared inside. She followed, finding herself in the kitchen, but Malloy was looking at one of the walls. A black curtain hung down near the corner, and he pushed it back to reveal a doorway, and ducked inside. She was right behind him.

“What’s this?” she asked, looking around. They’d entered a long, narrow space crowded with all sorts of curious objects. She saw some crates filled with the leftovers of someone’s life. A gramophone sat on a battered stand of some sort. Oddly, and looking completely out of place, a small safe sat at the far end of the room.

“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.”

FRANK 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.”