Murder on Waverly Place

by Victoria Thompson

  “You don’t know what I suffered, Elizabeth,” Mrs. Burke said tearfully. “That woman was horrible, just horrible. The things she said to me, to torture me, you wouldn’t believe. She deserved to die!”

  12

  FRANK WAS RIGHT ABOUT CUNNINGHAM NOT BEING AN early riser. When he called at his house, the maid told him he would have to come back later in the day. He had to tell her it was official police business and frighten her a bit before she would let him inside to wait. When she returned to fetch him from where he stood cooling his heels in the entryway, she even looked a little pale.

  “This way, please,” she said. She didn’t call him “sir.” Servants knew instinctively that he wasn’t any better than they were and didn’t deserve to be called “sir.”

  But when he was shown into a comfortable room at the back of the house that was obviously the room the family used for private times together, he found not Cunningham but a small, older lady, who was eyeing him with suspicion.

  “And what do you want with my son, young man?” she demanded the moment he entered. She stood in the center of the room, ramrod straight, her hands clasped in front of her, and glaring at him with a disdain that only rich people could master. She was thickening around the waist and her fair hair was beginning to show some silver threads, but her face was as smooth as satin. She’d probably never had a worry or a care to mar it.

  “It’s a private matter, Mrs. Cunningham,” he tried.

  “My son has no secrets from me,” she insisted. “I demand to know what business the police could possibly have with him.”

  Frank figured young Cunningham had lots of secrets from his dear mother, and he wasn’t about to tell her the truth about this one. He said, “I’m afraid a friend of your son’s has gotten himself into trouble, and Mr. Cunningham might be required to give evidence against him.”

  “He would do no such thing,” Mrs. Cunningham informed him. “My son is an honorable man.”

  “You don’t know what his friend did,” Frank tried. “Maybe his honor would force him to condemn his friend.”

  This surprised her, and before she could think of an answer, Mr. Cunningham himself bustled into the room. He’d obviously dressed in a hurry and hadn’t had time to shave or even comb his hair. He was still straightening his jacket. He glanced back and forth between Frank and his mother in alarm, trying to judge the mood before speaking.

  “Good morning, Mr. Cunningham,” Frank said to reassure him. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I need to ask you some more questions about the incident we discussed the other day. I was just telling your mother that—”

  “That one of your friends has gotten himself into trouble, and you are going to assist the police in persecuting him,” his mother informed him in outrage.

  Cunningham gave Frank a look of amazement and hurried to reassure his mother. “I don’t know what he told you, but that’s not it at all, Mother. It’s not that he caused trouble but that some rascal is causing trouble for him. Calling in the police seemed like the only way to put an end to it.”

  “I can’t imagine anything that would warrant the police at all!” she scolded.

  “That’s because you are far too gentle to understand the wicked ways of the world, Mother,” he said with a charming smile that Frank figured had been getting him out of trouble his entire life.

  “If your father were alive, he would never have allowed a policeman in the house,” she said, giving Frank a look that could have cut glass.

  “Then please leave us alone so we can finish our business and he can be on his way as quickly as possible, Mother,” he suggested, turning the full force of his charm on her.

  She had probably never refused him anything, and she could not start now. He was already moving her toward the door. “I’ll want to know exactly what you talked about,” she warned him before sweeping out of the room. Cunningham watched after her to make sure she was well and truly gone and then closed the door securely behind her.

  When he turned back to Frank, his charming smile had vanished. “What in God’s name are you doing here?” he demanded savagely.

  “I need to ask you a few more questions about what happened the other day.”

  “The Professor told me that some Italian boy had killed that woman,” he said. Obviously, he had also paid a visit to Waverly Place in hopes of finding Madame Serafina at home and no longer under the protection of Mrs. Gittings. “Why aren’t you out looking for him?”

  “We are looking for him,” Frank said, biting back his own impatience. “In the meantime, I’m trying to get enough information to prove he did it so when we bring him to trial, none of you will have to testify.”

  Cunningham’s eyes grew wide. Plainly, he hadn’t considered this possibility. “I can’t help you. I didn’t see anything at all,” he protested.

  “Maybe not, but I still have a few questions to ask,” Frank said, pulling out his notebook again. “Maybe that will help you remember what happened.”

  “I remember exactly what happened,” Cunningham insisted. “And now I’d like to start forgetting all of it!”

  Frank ignored his outburst. “Did you see anyone in the séance room except the people around the table?”

  “Of course not. That would have been . . .” He gestured vaguely. “Unacceptable,” he finally decided. “Why should anyone else be in there?”

  “Did you look in the cabinet?”

  “The cabinet? Why should we look in there?”

  “To make sure no one was hiding in it,” Frank suggested. “Someone who could pretend to be a spirit or something.”

  He frowned and ran a hand through his rumpled hair. “I didn’t look inside it,” he said. “I don’t know if anyone else did, but I never saw anyone open it in all the time I’ve been going to Madame’s séances.”

  Frank found that odd, but he didn’t comment. “I understand that everyone was holding hands around the table.”

  “We were holding each other’s wrists. I told you that already.”

  “Which means nobody sitting at the table could have stabbed Mrs. Gittings.”

  “Nobody sitting at the table would have wanted to stab her,” he said with frown. “Besides, that Italian boy did it, so why are you asking me all these questions about the people in the room?”

  “Because some of the people sitting at the table did want to kill her,” Frank said baldly.

  Cunningham’s eyes widened, and then he winced. “I . . . Can we sit down? I have the devil of a hangover, and I’m having trouble following this.”

  Frank obligingly took a seat on one of the chairs by the fireplace that Cunningham indicated. He sat down on the other and rubbed his temples a moment before looking at Frank again.

  “Did you say some of the people at the séance wanted to kill Mrs. Gittings?” he asked.

  “Yes, I did,” Frank confirmed. “And from what I’ve been told, you are one of them.”

  “Me!” he almost squeaked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “I’m talking about how you wanted to take Madame Serafina as your mistress.”

  Cunningham visibly paled. “That’s . . . not true,” he tried, his voice a croak.

  “But she wouldn’t leave Mrs. Gittings,” Frank continued as if he hadn’t heard the denial. “She was loyal because Mrs. Gittings had done so much to help her, but Mrs. Gittings wasn’t very loyal in return, was she?’ Frank asked. “She offered to sell the girl to you, didn’t she?”

  “Absolutely not!” Cunningham tried, but not very convincingly.

  “How much did she want for her?” Frank asked with interest.

  “A gentleman never discusses—” he tried, but Frank interrupted his feeble outrage.

  “More than your allowance would cover, I’d guess,” Frank continued relentlessly. “And I already know you won’t get your full inheritance until you’re twenty-five. Where were you going to get the money, Cunningham?”

  While Cunningham sputt
ered incoherently, Frank pretended to consult his notes.

  “Oh, that’s right,” he recalled. “You were going to make some investments. That’s what you were asking your father about at the séances, wasn’t it?”

  “Who told you that?” Cunningham demanded.

  “Just about everybody,” Frank lied. “They all heard the questions you asked your father.”

  “I forbid you to discuss my father,” Cunningham tried.

  “All right,” Frank said obligingly. “Let’s talk about those investments. I understand they weren’t very successful.”

  “That’s none of your business!”

  “But they weren’t, were they? And I understand you lost a lot of money. Not what your father would have wanted for you, I’m sure. Do you really think your father would have given you such bad advice?” Frank asked.

  The question surprised Cunningham. He stared at Frank in almost comic amazement. “I . . . I never thought of that.”

  “Well, think about it. What do you know about these men you invested with?”

  Cunningham blinked. “I . . . Nothing, really.”

  “How did you meet them?”

  “They . . . they approached me one evening at . . . at a gentlemen’s club.”

  Frank figured the men at this club rarely acted like gentlemen. “Why did you trust them?”

  He was rubbing his temples again. “Because my father had told me . . . I mean, his spirit had told me I would meet someone who would offer me an opportunity. Then the next night, I met them. It seemed . . . It seemed like fate!”

  Frank nodded sagely. “Let me guess, they told you about this business opportunity, and you offered to invest, but they refused to take your money.”

  Cunningham was gaping at him again. “Yes, that’s exactly what happened! How did you know? I couldn’t believe it! I had to practically beg them to let me invest. They said they didn’t think it was right to take my money in such a risky venture, but I knew it wasn’t a risk at all.”

  “Except it was.”

  “What?” he asked stupidly.

  “It was a risk, because you lost all your money.”

  Cunningham still seemed confused by this. “But I did exactly what my father had told me to do. It shouldn’t have worked out like that.”

  “Have you ever seen these men again?”

  “No, I haven’t,” he said in renewed surprise. “Not since they told me the venture failed. I suppose they were embarrassed.”

  Frank let that pass. “So there you were, still wanting the girl—”

  “She’s not just a girl,” Cunningham protested. “Stop calling her that!”

  “Madame Serafina then,” Frank conceded. “You still wanted her, but you’d lost all your money, and your mother wouldn’t give you any more, and you couldn’t hope to be able to pay Mrs. Gittings what she wanted. What were you going to do?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do,” Frank insisted. “What were you going to do?”

  Cunningham was starting to look a little sick. “I . . . I needed to speak with my father again, to find out what went wrong. I needed his advice.”

  “Did he give you advice when he was alive?” Frank asked with interest.

  This time, Cunningham’s face grew brick red. “He never had time,” he admitted reluctantly.

  Frank nodded. The boy had been ignored by his father and indulged by his mother. No wonder he was worthless. Six months after he came into his inheritance, the money would be gone.

  Frank pretended to consider what he had been told. “So you had lost the money you invested, and you couldn’t pay Mrs. Gittings to let Madame Serafina go. What were you going to do?”

  “I told you, I was going to ask my father!” he cried.

  “But if Mrs. Gittings was dead, you wouldn’t need any money at all,” Frank pointed out.

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  “But it’s true, isn’t it? She wasn’t a very nice woman,” Frank reminded him. “Everyone said so.”

  “I’m sure I never heard anyone say so,” Cunningham said righteously.

  “But it was true. Did you know those men you invested with were working for her?”

  He stiffened, and for an instant Frank wasn’t sure if he was surprised or just surprised Frank knew. “Why do you say that?” he asked.

  “Because it’s true. She was operating a fake séance, so why wouldn’t she try to cheat people out of money in other ways?”

  “Madame Serafina isn’t a fake!” he insisted.

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Of course I am! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Do you have a lot of experience with spiritualism?”

  “Well, yes, a bit,” he admitted.

  “You’ve visited other spiritualists?”

  “A few.”

  “But they couldn’t help you?”

  “They . . . Madame Serafina was different,” he decided. “She knows what’s inside of you. She knows what you’re thinking.”

  “Did she know you were thinking of taking her as your mistress?”

  Cunningham jumped to his feet. “How dare you!”

  “I’m just trying to figure out what happened,” Frank said in apology. “Maybe she was insulted that you thought she would sell herself. Maybe she told you what Mrs. Gittings wanted you to hear so you’d lose all your money.”

  “She’d never do that!”

  “Are you sure?” Frank asked. “I’ve seen women do some pretty nasty things to men who insulted them.”

  “I didn’t insult her! I would have married her if I could!”

  “But your mother would never let you marry a girl like that, would she?”

  Cunningham sank back down into his chair in defeat. “No, she wouldn’t.”

  Frank let him consider his miserable situation for a few moments, and then he said, “Professor Rogers thinks that this Italian boy who worked at the house killed Mrs. Gittings.”

  Cunningham scowled at him. “Then why are you here, bothering me?”

  “Because I can’t prove it. Everybody says he wasn’t in the room and couldn’t have gotten in without somebody seeing him.”

  “He couldn’t have gotten in without everybody seeing him,” Cunningham corrected him. “But what about that cabinet? Couldn’t he have been hiding in there and come out when the lights were out?”

  Frank didn’t answer. “Everyone was holding hands around the table, weren’t they?”

  Cunningham needed a few seconds to comprehend the sudden change of topic. “Yes, I already told you that,” he replied, suddenly wary.

  “And if everybody was holding somebody’s hands, then none of them could have stabbed Mrs. Gittings.”

  Cunningham waited, still not sure what Frank was getting at.

  “But isn’t there a way that somebody could get one of his hands free?”

  “What do you mean?” The color had faded from his face again.

  “I mean there’s a trick that some spiritualists use. They get up to turn out the lights, for instance, and when they sit back down, they keep one hand free.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” he lied.

  “Yes, you do,” Frank said. “Madame Serafina told me you do.”

  His eyes widened again. “Why would she tell you that?”

  “Because she wants me to think you killed Mrs. Gittings.”

  “No, she doesn’t!” he cried. “I don’t believe it!”

  “You don’t?” Frank asked with interest. “Then why did she also tell me that you could have managed to keep both your hands free that day so you could get up out of your chair and walk around to where Mrs. Gittings was sitting and stick a knife into her.”

  “That’s impossible!” he nearly shouted, lunging to his feet. Instantly, he grabbed his head and sank back down into the chair, clutching it. Frank truly enjoyed questioning someone with a hangover. He hardly had to exert himself at all.<
br />
  “What’s impossible? That you did it or that she told me about it?”

  “All of it,” he mumbled, wincing with pain. “Why would she say a thing like that?”

  “I don’t know,” Frank said, pretending to try to figure it out. “Maybe she’s mad at you for something.”

  “Why would she be mad at me?” he asked, looking up.

  “I’m going to guess it has something to do with the mistress business.”

  “But she wouldn’t do that,” he protested. “She’s . . . she’s . . .”

  “What?” Frank asked, truly interested in the answer.

  “She’s not like other women! She doesn’t care about money. She doesn’t even know how beautiful she is!”

  Frank doubted that, but he didn’t say so. “Tell me everything that happened that day at the séance. Start at the beginning.”

  “Why?” he asked, looking totally miserable.

  “Because I need to know if this Italian boy could have done it. When did you arrive?”

  He looked as if he could have cheerfully strangled Frank, but he said, “I don’t know what time it was. Everyone was already there when I arrived.”

  “Who opened the door for you?”

  “The Professor. He always does.”

  “Then what happened?”

  Cunningham glared at him for a long moment, and Frank couldn’t tell if he was just annoyed or if he couldn’t remember. Finally, he said. “I went into the parlor, where everyone was waiting.”

  “Did you talk to anybody?”

  “Yes . . . I think so. I’m sure I said hello to everyone, at least.”

  “Who came to take all of you into the séance room?”

  “Madame came. She always does.”

  “Was she alone?”

  “What do you mean? Of course she was alone.”

  “Didn’t the Professor usually come with her?”

  “I don’t know. I never paid any attention.”

  Frank nodded, making a note of that. “Then what happened?”

  “We went into the séance room and sat down.”

  “How do you decide where to sit at the table?”

  “Madame tells us.”

  This was something new. Frank managed not to let his interest show. “So you never knew where you’d be sitting?”