Death In Bagheria (A Serafina Florio Mystery)

by Susan Russo Anderson

  Serafina frowned. “I don’t think there’s really a need: he wasn’t even here during his mother’s illness. The more details he knows of our investigation, the more he’ll want to become involved, and your business will run the risk of becoming rudderless.”

  The baron nodded slowly.

  Serafina and Loffredo exchanged glances.

  Before the baron could call for Umbrello, there was a soft knock on the door, and he appeared.

  “Gentleman from the police to see you, my lord.”

  The baron frowned up at him. “What does he want?”

  “Wouldn’t say. He’d rather speak to you, I’m afraid.”

  “Tell him I’m busy, damn it all.”

  “He says it’s urgent. I’ve seated him in the receiving room.”

  After the baron closed the door, Umbrello whispered something in Rosa’s ear.

  Her face flushed, Rosa took Umbrello’s arm and looked up at him. “Of course. Another time, when this is over.”

  “What is it?” Serafina asked.

  “They’ve found Reggio’s body,” he said in a low voice.

  Loffredo looked at Serafina. Instinctively she reached for his hand and held it until the door was flung open, and the baron returned, taking his seat, a little unsteadily, it seemed to Serafina, as if he were being led to the gallows. Crossing his legs, he said, “Poor chap. One of our footmen was found gutted in a ditch.”

  There was silence. Serafina looked at Loffredo.

  “He was given notice yesterday—left without references, my lord.”

  “Doucette told me,” the baron said. “Fellow didn’t hold up his end, I understand.”

  “Rosa and I think he stole your wife’s journals from my room.” And half to herself she added, “The long arm of the killer.” She and Rosa exchanged glances.

  Serafina stopped for a moment. Her heart began to race, and she had to think.

  “Don’t mind her, she gets this way—leaves us all from time to time, but she’ll come back to us any moment now,” she heard Rosa say.

  “She was the same at university,” Loffredo said, smiling. “Best to let her be.”

  Presently, Serafina said, “We are, all of us in danger.” She turned to Umbrello. “Is there a locksmith on the grounds?”

  The baron frowned at Umbrello.

  Umbrello shook his head. “Reports to della Trabia.”

  “Out of the question,” Serafina said. “He needs to be someone we can trust, and he’ll need to work fast. At the very least, he must change the locks in Adriana’s bedroom and our guest rooms.”

  “Adriana?” Loffredo asked.

  “My daughter,” the baron said. “You must meet her, a surprise and simply a delight. You are staying the night, of course.”

  Loffredo looked at Serafina. “Yes, thank you.”

  “I’ll call the housekeeper and—”

  “No,” Serafina interrupted.

  “But where will the man sleep?”

  They were quiet. Serafina held her breath, trying in vain not to blush.

  Umbrello, sensitive to undercurrents, said, “There’s an empty room across the hall from our guests. I’ll send a chambermaid to make it up.”

  Exhaling, Serafina said, “As for the housekeeper, we’ll need to search her room before she leaves. I trust by now she’s packed.”

  Geraldo pushed forward on his chair. “That’s preposterous! She couldn’t have anything to do with this. She’d never have poisoned Caterina. Devoted to her. Stayed by my wife’s side for the whole of her illness. Slept in a chair by her bedside. After she died, the woman was grief stricken.”

  “Not one of the killers, of course not. She would never have poisoned your wife—but I think she found out who did or at least discovered one of killers.” Serafina told the baron of Doucette’s plans to take two accommodations in France.

  “Blackmail?” The baron gasped.

  Serafina nodded, thinking that if the baron was innocent of the ways of the human heart, he was not so with finances and the power of coins: he had grasped the housekeeper’s role in a flash.

  “But why didn’t she tell me? We could have stopped it!”

  Into the silence following his question, Rosa said, “She discovered it when it was too late, I’m sure.”

  “So the question is, where did she get the money—from the salary she’s paid as a lady’s maid and housekeeper?” Serafina asked.

  “As a lady’s maid, she was rewarded handsomely,” the baron said. “Her salary doubled as housekeeper, but she must have another source of income to buy or even to let apartments in Paris. Knowing French landlords as I do, they want proof of capital, and Paris is becoming more and more expensive. However, the family may have wealth. I think her brother owns a business of some sort, possibly having to do with finances. Perhaps he may be the one investing for her.” For a moment, he cast his eyes about the room.

  “Doucette knew about the journals and where they might be kept, advising me to search in the baroness’s hatboxes where I found a great deal of the earlier journals. I think your wife suspected what was going on in the house and how your business was … expanding—”

  “Leave my business out of this! Caterina hated my involvement in trade, everyone knows that.”

  Serafina bit her lip. She considered persuading the baron of the smuggling going on under his nose, but quickly discarded the idea: she lacked the luxury of time. “That may be so. But she saw an increase in your involvement. How often have you hunted in Prizzi since you expanded into shipping? Taken a weekend to be alone with your wife?”

  He glared at her, opened his mouth to speak, but caught himself, seemed to weigh her words, then shrugged.

  “The killer was afraid of your wife’s influence over you, or at least fearful that she might cause a distraction or a delay. Time, I would imagine, is of the essence in the shipping business. In his mind, Lady Caterina had become a liability to achieving his ends.”

  “Not quite, but you’re close,” the baron said. “Caterina didn’t like some of my associates and tried to persuade me to give them up. Names not necessary now.”

  “Oh, but they are,” Serafina said, “and you must give them to me.”

  Rosa intervened. “After dinner. Time is short.”

  Umbrello looked at his watch and nodded.

  “Go on,” Loffredo said, touching Serafina’s arm.

  “I believe your wife suspected that she was being poisoned, and some of her later entries may detail her suspicions. That’s a guess, but a reasonable one to make.”

  The baron’s eyes darted from side to side.

  “If I’m right, the housekeeper kept these journals as her proof and no doubt has them hidden somewhere in her room.”

  “You mean Doucette may have taken my wife’s journals?” One of his hands rubbed an arm of his chair.

  Serafina nodded. “Specifically, some of the journals Lady Caterina wrote during the two years before her death.”

  There was silence for a time as the awful truth of the baroness’s suffering and death seemed to overwhelm him once again. Like most grief, Serafina thought, it came in thick waves, often when least expected, and the baron, she could see, struggled with the horror of her death, the deliberate act on the part of someone to rob his wife of her life.

  And what about Loffredo, Umbrello, Rosa? They, too, were touched by the hand of evil. Ghastly, the realization that someone they’d met on this estate had willfully and with careful planning taken another’s life, or worse, that more than one person had colluded in her murder.

  Rosa was the first to break the silence. She went to the baron’s side and stroked his shoulder. “Send for the housekeeper. Invite her to dinner—it’s her last evening with you, and you’d like to
thank her for ten years of devotion to the baroness. During hors d’oeuvres, you and Loffredo will entertain her while Serafina, Umbrello, and I will search the room.”

  “Brilliant,” Serafina said.

  The baron wiped his brow. “Is all of this necessary? Doucette … loved my wife as a sister. Splendid, your idea of inviting her to dine; I should have thought of it—her last evening here with us—how stupid of me! But to search her belongings? I forbid it.”

  “Do you fear what we’ll find?” Serafina asked.

  In an instant, the baron sputtered with rage. “I’ve had about enough of you!” He pointed at Serafina, his face like that of a vengeful god. “You take your friend and get out now! Get out!”

  “My lord …” Umbrello rose.

  “My lord, nothing! And I shouldn’t have allowed a servant to take part in these deliberations.”

  “Our hunt will prove her innocence,” Rosa said. “We won’t find anything, and we’ll be careful of her belongings, you have my word. And you’ve encouraged us to search all the rooms.”

  Like a cornered beast, the baron squirmed, looked into Rosa’s eyes, down at the floor and muttered, “Perhaps you’re right.”

  Once again, the madam had succeeded in staunching his fury.

  Serafina slowed her breathing. “What time is it?”

  Loffredo looked at his watch. “A few minutes to seven.”

  “Dinner is at what time?”

  “Nine.”

  “We’ll meet back here at eight. Now we need to talk with the servants.”

  The baron threw up his hands. “Why? You’ve already interviewed them.”

  “You must tell them what you know about Reggio’s murder,” Serafina said.

  Rosa piped up. “And if you don’t tell them about Reggio, you’ll have all talk and no work, rumors and a stampede.”

  Umbrello nodded. “I agree, my lord. You must tell them about Reggio’s death, what you know about it, at least. If they find out for themselves, they’ll not feel safe in this house and will look for work elsewhere. It may be easy to find servants, but it’s difficult to keep the good ones.”

  The baron went to the window and looked out. He was silent for a long time. When he turned to them, he said, “I am out of my depth here.”

  Out of his depth anywhere, a broken man who’s lost his anchor.

  “The last thing I want is to lose my staff. Trouble enough keeping them as it is. Now, with the danger … the fact that someone deliberately …” He looked at Loffredo.

  “When someone they’ve worked with has been killed, servants need to know the truth from their employer. It’s your only option,” Loffredo said. “Some may decide to leave, but that’s their choice, and you cannot control it.”

  A Meeting

  They were gathered together, sitting at long tables in the servants’ refectory, some of the younger ones standing along one side of the room, Umbrello toward the middle. Serafina, Rosa, and Loffredo stood in the front, on one side of the baron. When they were not shooting glances at their guests, the servants gazed up at their employer, a man whose dignity and standing gave them greater distinction. They worked for nobility, were conscious of the privilege, and seemed to be saying to their visitors, “He is a baron after all, not just a very wealthy man.”

  “The police found the body of a man they’ve identified as Reggio. Until yesterday, he was our footman.”

  The room was silent. Doucette kept her eyes glued to a spot on the wall, her hands in her lap. Serafina saw Lina start at Geraldo’s announcement, eyes wide as she looked around the room for the faces of her friends. When she caught a maid sending her a puzzled expression, she hunched her shoulders and raised her palms slightly. The cook coughed, a linen pressed to her lips, her eyes flitting about the room. When Renata straggled in, Mima waved to her with a frenetic gesture. A footman, Reggio’s working twin, who had been sitting next to the cook, gave Renata his seat, then went to stand in the back, gloved hands at his side, his body stiff, his face a mask.

  “You know that as of yesterday, Reggio was not in our employ. And since he was not one of our staff at the time of his death, strictly speaking, it has nothing to do with us. The police must have been convinced of that, since they told us we will not be part of their investigation.”

  There was a long stretch of silence. It spilled out the door, snuffing out noises from the outside, as if the world held its breath in sympathy with what was going on inside the room.

  “How did he die, if I might ask, my lord?” the footman asked.

  “They haven’t told us exactly.”

  There was a murmur of voices.

  “Quiet down. If you must know, his body was found in a ditch. Mutilated.”

  Serafina rubbed her forehead, shaking her head slightly.

  Some of the maids gasped, and there was a flurry of talking.

  “So it was murder?” The footman again.

  “Yes.”

  Serafina could not believe the baron’s lack of sensitivity, and yet it was in keeping with his nature. Not for the first time she wondered how the man could be so bereft of basic human understanding. She had to say something. “Like you, we are all of us in a state of shock. Let us be silent a moment and say a prayer for his soul and for his family.”

  In unison, heads bowed, and Serafina felt as one with them.

  The seconds accumulated.

  “If anyone has any information that you think may be of interest to us concerning Reggio’s actions while he was employed here, even if it seems inconsequential, please bring it to my attention,” Serafina said, breaking in before the baron could dismiss them. “Are there any questions?”

  The footman raised his hand. “Will Reggio be replaced, my lord? The season’s coming up and—”

  “Of course he will, man.”

  There was silence.

  Lina raised her hand. “Are we safe? Some of us have noticed that there are people who have keys who shouldn’t have them.”

  There were murmurs all around and a few hands shot up.

  The baron closed his eyes. “Of course you’re safe. Remember that Reggio was not killed in this house. But as an added precaution, we are in the process of changing all the locks. Now, if that’s all, please go about your business.”

  The baron was less than useless. Serafina heard the whispering in groups as the servants slowly filed out. The meeting had raised, not lowered their level of fear. She hurried out, wanting to catch up with Lina when she was tapped on the shoulder.

  “Excuse me, ma’am. We know Reggio was a shirker and all but do you think his death has anything to do with us? Gives me the creeps just thinking about it. We could be killed in our beds before they get around to changing the locks. I know how slowly they work around here. The baron will hem and haw, find the best price. It could be a blood bath.”

  “I understand, and just as soon as we can—”

  “But my brother’s a locksmith. He could start right away.”

  The Search

  Umbrello slowly opened the door, cringing when the floorboards creaked as they tiptoed into the housekeeper’s room on the fourth floor. A trunk sat at the foot of Doucette’s single iron bed, and a bulging carpetbag slumped alongside it. The room, a cramped space with three of them bending and crowding about, smelled of harsh soap and rose water. On the nightstand was a small frame. Serafina held it to the candlelight, a fading picture of two smiling people, Doucette and an older woman, no doubt her mother.

  Rosa grabbed the carpetbag, plopped herself on the bed, and began rummaging inside. Finding nothing of interest, she dumped the contents onto the bed and riffled through them, shoving a comb, small coin purse, handkerchiefs, and ticket wallet back inside.

  “Can’t leave it like that. Put everything back
neatly,” Serafina said. “Doucette’s smart. One thing out of place and she’ll discover someone’s been into her room.”

  The madam opened her mouth, but glancing at Umbrello, she thought better of objecting. “You’re right. I was trying to hurry it along. We’ve not much time,” she said, pursing her lips at Serafina while she straightened the bag’s contents.

  “Why don’t you search the dresser?” Serafina asked Umbrello, who stood immobile in the room, uncomfortable and waiting for orders.

  His face a distress, he took the first drawer out of its slot and placed it on the bed. “Doesn’t feel right to me, doing this,” he said, hunched into himself, looking at the contents, which happened to be undergarments, obviously not wanting to touch them.

  “Your first time?” Rosa asked.

  He nodded.

  “Gets better the more you do it,” she said, patting his arm.

  “Let’s hope this is the last of it.”

  “Not if you become our good friend, which I hope you do.” The madam paused to give him a red glance. “Fina’s got intrigue aplenty up her sleeve,” Rosa said, smiling. Then she bent over one side of the bed, wedging an arm under the pillows and felt with her hand. Shaking her head, she plumped them back again.

  Serafina, who had gone over to the trunk, tried in vain to open it, so Rosa walked over to help. “Locked!” The two of them looked for the key while Umbrello took the second drawer out of its slot and placed it on the bed, carefully examining its contents, rummaging through the series of small boxes and tiny porcelain vessels before replacing them. He riffled through the other two drawers, went over to the cabinet and checked for journals. For a moment, he eyed the trunk, went over to it, and lifted one end with his hand. “Stop looking for the key,” he said. “The trunk is empty.”

  Kneeling beside the bed, she stuck her arm underneath and found some boxes. They made a loud, scraping sound on the floorboards as she pulled at them. She was about to tear off the lids when she heard footsteps. Straightening ever so quietly, she put a warning finger to her lips, and they stopped what they were doing, staring at nothing, like dancers halting in mid-stride until the footfalls became faint and disappeared. Then Serafina began opening the boxes, small wooden contrivances with careful corners, foreign in bearing, reminding her of their owner. She remembered Doucette’s correct stance when they met, the woman’s wooden smile slowly becoming more lifelike as the interview wore on. The lid of the first made a sucking sound, resisting her pull. Tissue rose to meet her, and she pushed it back and felt in between two hats. “A candle, please.”