Murder On The Rue Cassette (A Serafina Florio Mystery)

by Susan Russo Anderson

  “I haven’t spent enough time thinking like Elena, other than going to the exhibit and seeking out her friends there. What would she do during the day? Go to the Tuileries, the Luxembourg?” Serafina ran a hand through her curls. “How about The Parc Monceau? La Muette?”

  Loffredo shook his head.

  “What are her favorite restaurants? Where did she shop? Did she collect old books and prints, silver? Pretend I’m Elena,” Serafina said, and knew by his look that she’d made a mistake.

  Loffredo snapped his head back as if she’d hit him, but then the smile she knew so well lit up his face, and he began to laugh, and some of the day’s heaviness lifted. Some, but not all. She felt the flatness of his spirit return, covering him like a blanket, and remembered her mother’s counsel, her mother who lived a life learning to shore up her father’s low spirits one day at a time. “In the end, you must let them have their moods,” she’d say, and shake her head. And she’d let her father stay in his study for days. But she, Serafina, did not have that luxury. She needed to find Elena, and she needed Loffredo’s help. “Pick a place, any place. What did you do the last day you were with Elena?”

  He was silent, but she could tell he was thinking.

  She gave him more time to collect himself. “The exhibit was so important to Elena and to her friends. It was a turning point in their lives, a watershed. Finally after working so long and so hard, they banded together, or most of them did, and hung their most important works. Consider the visual impact of this exhibit, especially on Elena. For the first time, hundreds of paintings by a new school of artists could be seen for the first time. It must have been a clamoring. It must have had shattering effect on Elena, flighty and impressionable as she is, like the firing of a battle’s first cannon shot. She may have felt left out, passed over.”

  “You mean, no one was paying attention to her,” he said.

  It was Serafina’s turn to laugh. “That, too. It might have caused her to change tack, to try and alter her life, to act in an extreme fashion.”

  “Extreme? That’s the way she always was. But I know what you mean.” He nodded slowly.

  She felt his mind begin to work on the problem.

  “And don’t forget, she’s pregnant, and I know what that’s like. Poor lost Elena,” Serafina murmured.

  “The last time we were here—that was a few years ago. She called me to Paris for a ball, I forget which one. At that time she was trying to make a general jealous. It was right after the Commune, and Paris had been devastated—over twenty-thousand needlessly slain—but afterward, the city put on its summer finery. The days were long and despite the coppery smell in the air—the blood had not yet sunk deep enough into the soil—the people, well, the people were happy to be alive. It was enough to be out of the house, greeting neighbors, walking in the warmth and sure-footedness of peace. Elena sent me a note to meet her here, and I did, over by the Medici pool. At that time Elena had an apartment near the Luxembourg and used to walk here often.”

  He paused and Serafina swept her eyes around, at the sandstone gravel paths straight and lined with trees, at the Palais du Luxembourg where men with shovels were planting and weeding the beds of exuberant flowers, at the Parisians dressed in the latest style. They were everywhere, strolling arm in arm, sitting on benches, the children laughing, running, shouting.

  “But Elena being Elena, grew restless, asked me to walk with her. We took the Rue Bonaparte all the way to the Seine. On the little streets surrounding the École des Beaux Arts, we went into all the little shops and she bought what she loved, prints, old books, candelabra, large swaths of fabric, small paintings. I realized that she wanted me with her so I could carry her parcels.”

  He looked at Serafina with such warm, sad eyes.

  “Did she know the shopkeepers?”

  He thought a moment. “Many of them, I believe she did. Arranged to have her living room painted or the walls treated.”

  Serafina stood and smoothed her skirt. “Then we must go. We must talk to all of them.”

  Rosa looked at her watch. “We have a few hours until most of them close their shops for the evening.”

  Loffredo, Rosa, and Serafina walked into the late afternoon sun, the shadows growing, the streets and sidewalks thick with people, most smartly attired and purposeful, probably heading home. They passed the Place St. Sulpice and the bells sounded the hour. They kept walking through the student quarter to Saint Germain des Prés where Serafina stopped in front of the façade and said a prayer to the Virgin to help her see the truth. They walked to the Quai Voltaire and whispered to the Seine, Loffredo planting a chaste kiss on her forehead. Happy to be in each other’s company, she and Loffredo walked the many side streets, looking into shop windows, occasionally pointing to something that piqued their curiosity or pleased them.

  “Here’s one. She knew the proprietor and bought art books and prints from him.” They entered a small shop near the Seine, cheek by jowl with antique stores and book sellers.

  The wooden façade gleamed with a new coat of paint and shellac in the blue color Serafina associated with Paris. Perhaps the French were the only ones capable of creating it, an ultramarine so deep there were purple overtones. The gold script proclaimed, “Thomas d’Automne et Fils depuis 1836” and in the window were displayed thick tomes containing plates of paintings by David, Jean Auguste Ingres, Delacroix, Gérome, Poussin, Fragonard, and surprisingly Édouard Manet, but none of the other new painters. Strange that Elena would frequent such a traditional shop, but then she remembered the prints she’d seen in her ladies’ parlor, reproductions of paintings by David.

  As they entered, Serafina noticed the shop had a few tourists paging through books. The walls held floor to ceiling books. Behind the counter, she saw hundreds of small drawers with brass pulls, no dust, but the exquisite odor of finely crafted paper and binding, the scent lingering and high pitched, along with the unmistakable smell of sandalwood and old leather. Something about the store yellowed the light, antiqued the world and made it turn more slowly.

  Loffredo’s face was inscrutable.

  Presently a short, round man with a mustache, white hair, and bushy black eyebrows emerged from the back.

  He frowned at them. “Do I know you? Now let me see,” the man said, combing his mustache with a thumb, “I recognize you, young man, but not this woman.” Serafina detected a wry smile.

  “Forgive my appearance,” she said.

  “An encounter with some Parisian ruffians,” Loffredo explained.

  The man was somewhat solicitous. Also wary.

  “We’ve come to ask you about one of your customers, Elena Loffredo.”

  The proprietor furrowed his brows. “Give me a moment.”

  They were silent until the man remembered.

  “The countess, no?”

  They nodded.

  The man cocked his head. “Now when was the last time she was in the store? Hmm.” He thought for a moment. “I could look it up, but if you bear with me ...” He stared into the space beyond his customers. “Could have been March. Yes. Wasn’t yet spring, but a hint of spring. Students still puffing their breath, I remember. The light, silvery.” He closed his eyes. “And she came into the store, drawn by the David plates. I had them in the window at the time. Impeccably attired, I might say, as always. Yes. She bought three prints, portraits, the Comtesse Vilain and her daughter, the portrait of Madame Récamier, and the portrait of Emilie Sériziat and her son. Said they were for her ladies’ room. She wanted them framed, she trusted my taste. They were to be hung on a small vertical wall adjacent to her desk. She said she was particularly haunted by the portraits of the women with their children.”

  “How did she seem to you, in a hurry, wistful, flighty, haughty?”

  “I ... really couldn’t say. Except ... how should I put this? The countess could be all of those things in the space of a few minutes.” He smiled, gave the question greater consideration. “At peace, I’d say.
Not flighty, no. At peace. She said she felt the world changing around her while she stood still. She’d had quite enough of doing this and that. She said she needed to do something with her life.”

  Chapter 29: An Evening with Les Mardistes

  Serafina was thinking when Carmela burst into her room and said, “Elena may be painting in the south of France.”

  “Explain.”

  “What happened to your hair? You’ve been with Loffredo, haven’t you?” And Carmela spit out his name as if she were the mother and Serafina, the wayward child.

  Serafina remained calm, neither denying nor apologizing. “Tell me how you know Elena is in the south of France.”

  “Don’t change the subject. You and your lover, that ... Elena’s husband, because of your selfishness with him may have just ruined your reputation. You are beyond repair. Our family will be devastated. As it is, we hang by a thread. You don’t know what’s going on because you don’t want to know.”

  She saw herself in her daughter’s rant. Perhaps it was because she was physically spent by the afternoon’s efforts, or perhaps it was because she was purged of emotion by the fight with the don’s spies. Perhaps it was because she knew her own heart, or perhaps because of how well the investigation was proceeding, but she wasn’t angry with her daughter, not in the least. Serafina marveled at how Carmela’s temperament matched her own, emotions raw and quick to come to the boil and with such a tongue. But Carmela was unsettled. She must help her find herself and in so doing, help to save the family which she knew was in peril. Sicily could no longer support their work. The don would never give up. They must make a decision. She must help Carmela find something special, work close to landscape design.

  “Loffredo and I were together this afternoon, you’re right, but not in the way you mean. Sit next to me. Tell me what you know about Elena. If she’s alive, we need to find her.”

  “Teo, Arcangelo, and Tessa were the ones responsible for finding the artist who knew her,” Carmela said, sitting down and visibly subdued.

  “How?”

  “I’m not quite sure, but the three of them spend their days near the exhibit on the Boulevard des Capucines. I think Arcangelo and Teo walk around the area while Tessa goes inside. They’ve gotten invitations to many of the artists’ studios that way. Some, Tessa said, do work she admires. Others, not so much. If they ask, she tells them she’s an artist with a studio in Italy and would like to study in Paris. But most of the time she talks to them about their work and they are thrilled to show it to her, unless of course they are deep into their painting and then they don’t respond.”

  Carmela paused and smoothed her skirt.

  “Of course,” Serafina said. “Go on.”

  “Today Tessa met Paul Cézanne—he has some works in the exhibit.”

  Serafina nodded. “With a southern feel.”

  Carmela seemed surprised at the remark. “Tessa told him how much she loved his work, the lines, the color, the feeling—you know how Tessa talks. She asked him about his palette, how he mixes paints, stretches the canvas, what size he works in, like that. Anyway, he gave her his card and invited her to visit his studio on the Rue de Vaugirard. They ran back to the hotel for me, and the four of us got quite a tour. While Tessa and I were asking him some technical questions, Arcangelo and Teo looked at all the canvases, his brushes, his stretching tools, the rolls of linen in a corner, his work area. The light in the room was breathtaking, the colors, the smell of gesso and linseed oil—I shall never forget it.”

  Serafina nodded then imagined Arcangelo in the studio. “He can’t see colors, you know.” She smiled.

  “I know. He sees bright colors, he told me, but not subtle gradations. How much of life he misses.” Carmela continued. “Teo saw a painting lying in the corner, very different from the rest of Cézanne’s work. It wasn’t his work, the artist told Teo, but belonged to a friend, an aspiring artist. Cézanne said he tried to encourage his friend to paint, to attend one of the many ateliers associated with the École des Beaux Arts, but she wasn’t interested. Time was running out for her, she told Cézanne, and anyway she wasn’t interested in what the school had to offer her. She wanted to paint, to do nothing else, to immerse herself in the world of sight and art, but confessed that she became easily distracted. ‘A countess, you know, flits here, goes there,’ he told Teo.”

  “So how does he know she’s in the south of France?” Serafina asked.

  “I’m getting to that. He told her the best thing for her would be to get away from Paris, go someplace where she wouldn’t be distracted, and paint. ‘Paint, paint, paint, until your eyeballs drop out of your head. Then paint some more’—his words. He suggested the south of France, perhaps Arles or Aix. She thought she might just do that, leave everything and disappear for a year. The canvas was signed Elena Loffredo.”

  Serafina was silent for a while. “And you didn’t press him? Did he seem to withhold, know more than he told?”

  “Perhaps,” Carmela said, “but I’m not like you. I don’t have the art of drawing people out.”

  “Nonsense.” Serafina looked out at the scene below in the Place du Palais Royal but saw only the thoughts in her head. If Elena were alive, she had disappeared, left a kitten in her apartment to starve. If that was the case, how depraved had she become? If she disappeared, it would be to change her life in a major way, not as a lizard changes his skin, but a change from the inside out. Would she do that? Could she do that? What had caused her to think this way? How would she fare without her friends? Did any of them know about this plan, other than Cézanne? If she was in the south of France, how would Serafina find her? How could Elena have gone there without all of her friends knowing?

  “What did you think of her painting?”

  Carmela shrugged. “I’m not the one to ask. I can’t criticize another’s work. Tessa called it muddy. The composition was beautiful, but the overall impression was ... of someone just beginning to paint.”

  “What do you think we ought to do?”

  “Tessa began talking to him about her work and he invited all of us to attend a salon this evening. He called it ‘Les Mardistes’ because it meets on Tuesdays at the home of Stéphane Mallarmé on the Rue de Rome. He thought if she were still in town, Elena would be there, and if she wasn’t there, perhaps someone else would know her whereabouts. He said the salon this evening would be well-attended because Pissarro and his wife planned to be there, an attraction, especially for the group of painters he formed.

  “Will Cézanne be there?”

  “Of course. And he thinks that many musicians will attend. Mallarmé is a symbolist.”

  Whatever that was.

  “What should we wear?” Carmela asked.

  “One of your new dresses, of course, the indigo would suit your eyes and hair. You’d stand out in the crowd, I believe,” Serafina said.

  “I don’t want to stand out. I want to blend in. From our visits to the artists’ studios and to the exhibit, from the dress of women in their work, I think the women’s outfits will be unique, colorful, stylish without being slaves to the latest fashion. I think the clothes we wore on the trip with a tuck here, a slight change there—they’d be more appropriate than the new dresses Giulia created for us.”

  Rosa walked in. “Wear what you want and make it unique, a reflection of your soul, and don’t make such a fuss.”

  Serafina sent a note to Loffredo telling them where they’d be that evening and asking him to please join them, but he declined, saying he’d wait for their return in the hotel lobby because he had something important to discuss.

  In the end, they dressed the way they wanted, but with help from Giulia who was summoned at the last minute. The daughter who had come to Paris to work at the heart of high fashion altered this, tucked that, changed the jewelry they chose to wear and created unique costumes. They looked like free spirits. Well, almost.

  An hour later, Serafina’s group stood in the middle of a high-ceilinge
d room with large windows on one wall overlooking a park. They huddled together, and as they looked around, they found all kinds of attire, all of it interesting. Most of the furniture had been pushed aside to accommodate the large crowd. Guests stood in small clusters or sat on the floor conversing, or pushed seats into a corner, sitting close to one another. The talk was earnest, the mood ebullient. A few windows had been opened to freshen the smoke-filled air, and a spring breeze wafted inside, along with sounds from the street, the clomp of horses, the belch of a train.

  Most of the guests were artists, that was clear. All were scrubbed for the event and in their finest clothes, ready to absorb the program they knew would be a part of the evening.

  “My daughter is a painter and longs to study in Paris,” Rosa said to the man with a long white beard. He and his wife had just been introduced to them by their host, Stéphane Mallarmé, a small man with a goatee and warm, intense eyes.

  “Then she should ask to join l’atelier Julian, just for the basics you understand,” Camille Pissarro said, turning to Tessa. “There you’ll learn proportion and perspective, how to mix color. All theory, no art. But don’t stay more than a year. It will ruin your soul if you try to ape the classics. That’s what the Salon does not understand. We love the classics, Rembrandt, David, Ingres, but we reject convention. The world has moved on, thanks to us. It is by concentrating on line and color, the quality of the light, by drawing the edges of what you see, the shape of the objects that you wish to paint, mademoiselle—this is how to become a painter.” His wife nodded and smiled.

  “I love your work, the peace of the country, the quality of the brush strokes. It’s as if I’m inside the frame, breathing in the scent of apple blossoms, or wiping the snow off my boots.”

  Cézanne joined them. “Listen to what this man says. Pontoise, indeed: all of France has changed because of him. Our movement, you will see, will revolutionize art and thought.”