Death In Bagheria (A Serafina Florio Mystery) (10 page)

“Ruffo?”

Serafina nodded and sat on the bed.

“But Papa wanted me here for Easter. He said I don’t get fed at Ruffo’s, but he doesn’t know much. Ruffo and I play games.”

There was a tap on the door, and Ornetta entered, hands on hips.

“Please join us,” Serafina said.

“If you’ll be with her for a few minutes, I’ll fetch the laundry.”

“Of course.” Turning to Adriana, Serafina asked, “And where did you find that tiara you were wearing in my room?”

Adriana, who had been running from the bed to the door and back, seemed in need of a short rest, so she plopped herself next to Serafina. “Want me to show you?”

“Just tell me, that would be fine. I like sitting here.”

“In Mama’s room.”

“It’s locked, isn’t it?”

“But I just ask a servant.”

“And?”

“He opens it.”

They were quiet for a few moments.

“Sometimes I see her here.”

“Who?”

“Mama. Papa said died, but I know different.” She put a finger to her lips. “She told me she’d never leave me. When I’m here, I see her sometimes, but don’t tell anyone because Papa gets angry.”

“I promise.” Serafina was silent for a moment. “She must love you very much.”

Adriana shrugged. “She used to read to me.”

“What did she read?”

But Adriana seemed bored with the subject and on to others, so the question went unanswered. “I’ve got to go now.”

“Please, let’s wait for Ornetta.”

“Why?”

“Because I think she doesn’t like it when you leave her.”

Just then, Ornetta returned with laundry. Running, Adriana brushed past the nurse and out the door. Ornetta dropped the basket and ran after her.

Through a Glass

F
or
th
e first time, Serafina felt as though she was making some progress. She and Rosa had combed the ladies’ parlor and found more journals squirreled into almost every drawer in several of the end tables—thank the Madonna, not so many volumes as they’d found earlier in the baroness’s room and in the gazebo. After they’d placed them in another neat pile next to the others on Serafina’s desk, she’d looked for the last time in the glass, wiped some dust off her left cheek, and took a satisfied pull at her watch pin. Almost half past three and time for her visit with the baron. Would he be ready for her? Did he remember that he’d scheduled the meeting?

E
ssentially, he was a businessman, but commerce never explained a man’s soul, and Serafina had little to go on except Rosa’s dislike for him. What was it she’d said? Serafina opened her notebook, flipped back to the madam’s exact words: “He knew what he wanted, took it, departed. Imperious. Little charm.” Earlier, when Serafina was introduced to him, his eyes were opaque, like a muddy pool of water, and she must admit, she had little use for the man, so at this point, he was an enigma beyond her reach.

Why would the baroness have agreed to marriage with him? Simple, it was arranged. For no apparent reason, Serafina remembered her parents’ mandate that she marry the son of her father’s friend, a rabid advocate of liberty—not all that bad, perhaps, but full of himself. Serafina was aghast at the prospect of spending her life with that pimply-faced creature, so she had refused. It caused a row, nothing she couldn’t handle, and she’d gone on with her life, eventually marrying Giorgio, that dear, sweet man, enjoying a life of marital bliss for twenty years until he died. Why hadn’t the baroness objected to her espousal like Serafina had? Again, the answer was simple: aristocrats were locked into their betrothals.

As she entered his study, Serafina saw the baron peering at the harbor through a brass telescope.

“I hope I’m not interrupting.”

He wheeled around to face her, took out his watch attached to a long gold chain, and smiled. “A woman who is on time—delightful.”

Although she cringed inside, Serafina smiled. It was the first evidence she’d seen that he had any spark.

“Our ship is preparing for her first voyage. Its storage chambers are loaded with fruit from my orchards. Would you like to see?”

She took the telescope from his hands and focused on the harbor across the road. In the foreshortened distance, she saw the air shimmering with moisture and sun. The closest wharves were hives of activity as men in blue swarmed around two ships. Cartons of freight swung in the air from an older ship before being lowered and stowed below deck in the baron’s steamer, gleaming and new, its hull painted white, its two black stacks, formidable. Fore and aft were masts and spars, ropes for unfurling sails, and the tricolor flapped atop the ship. Even from this distance, she could hear the men’s shouts, the clop of mules, the faint screeching of gulls.

Serafina noticed a dozen or so smaller crates sitting on the pier and waiting to be loaded. “There’s writing on the side of some of those smaller crates, but I can’t make out the words.”

He took the telescope and gazed through it for a long minute. “Destinations, I would imagine. Fragile, need to be loaded by hand, I’m guessing, but I thought you were talking about the name of our ship, a steamer, by the way, and very fast. Speed is of the essence these days, my son tells me. He’s the expert when it comes to shipping and alliances; I concentrate on the books. Some years back, we bought two older ships from a line in Genoa, but this new one is a real beauty. Two engine rooms below deck. We commissioned her in Glasgow and Naldo supervised the building. We named her the
Caterina Bella
.” He whispered the words and cleared his throat before continuing. “We hope to make the port of New York in ten days.”

“And the ship alongside?”

He swung the telescope in its direction and said, “An old clipper. Belongs to one of our British associates.” Motioning for her to sit, he said, “Where’s your companion?”

Just then, Rosa blazed into the room and sat next to Serafina. “Late, sorry,” she said, swiping at the corners of her mouth. She pushed the air out of her billowing skirts and settled herself in an overstuffed chair, barely touching the carpet with her heels.

“The baron was showing me his new steamer.” Serafina pointed to the telescope on its stand in front of the window. “You can see it through the telescope if you like.”

Rosa shook her head, dismissing the offer with a wave of her hand.

He smiled at the madam. “In the harbor now, being loaded with supplies.”

“It sails when?” Rosa asked.

“Late today.” He paced before them. “We hope to make North America in ten days, not a record, but respectable, especially for this time of year—early for steaming into northern waters.”

“Do you carry passengers?”

He nodded. “A few. There’s room for over two hundred men, women, and children, most of them in steerage, but these days, our profit is from carrying cargo, not people; now we ship citrus to New York and Boston, perhaps New Orleans or San Francisco in the future.” He rubbed his hands together. “Next year, my son tells me, when families who can afford better accommodation begin to leave, we plan on refitting part of the upper deck with first-class cabins, but for now, our need is for space below deck.”

“When who begins to leave?” Rosa asked.

“Our bankers bet on hard times, a mass exodus from Sicily within the next five years, growing stronger in the next decades.”

Serafina and Rosa were silent.

“There’s unrest all over the Europe. I’m afraid for France, that idiot Emperor trying to slap around the Kaiser—doesn’t know what he’s in for. And Italy struggles while Garibaldi fights Austria and the papal states. If more banks fail, the future of the merchant class in the south will be grim. The new world calls, and that’s where we come in.” The baron smiled.

Serafina swallowed. She imagined her son, Vicenzu, looking out at her from behind the windows of their empty apothecary shop, saw in her mind the streets of Oltramari which, lately, seemed rustier, dustier. But no, she rejected his words: after all, what did he know? She turned to Rosa, who caught her mood, reached over, and patted her hand.

“The ship’s named after the baroness,” Serafina said, looking at Rosa.

The baron nodded.

“A shame she’s missing this day,” Serafina said.

He furrowed his brows. “Afraid you’re wrong there. She wanted nothing to do with our business. She hated it. How did she think …” His question hung in the air.

To break the mood, Rosa said, “Such an honor, having a ship named after—”

“Hated all talk of business.” Red faced, the baron heaved himself over to the hearth, grabbed an iron, and poked at smoldering embers. “Drat those servants! Don’t know how to tend a fire?”

Recovering somewhat, he sat across from them and crossed his legs. “What is it you wish to discuss—my married life? How my wife loathed me, couldn’t bear the sight of me? How we slept in separate rooms, seldom spoke? How she never cared a fig for my business, didn’t want to hear my thoughts on European history or its future? I disgusted her! I suppose she assumed aristocrats cultivated coins from the soil or grew them in huge pots and stored them in the larder. Unspeakably stubborn, Caterina, just like her father and his father before him. Blind to the change, killing themselves out, that’s what they’re doing. But …” He looked up at her portrait, then at a spot in the room as if he could see her shade. “She was so beautiful, like an angel when she walked into a room, and a poet with words, so charming, they flowed from her lips.” He stopped, as if reluctant to leave the memory. “And I loved her.”

The two women were silent until Serafina asked, “Your business, is that what killed her?”

He opened his mouth, color washing up his face, but Rosa quickly stepped in.

“Forgive my friend.” Rosa glared at her. “She has no manners.”

“Not when it comes to uncovering the truth, I don’t.” Serafina turned to the baron. “And that’s why I’m here. Your daughter was convinced that her mother was murdered. You don’t share that conviction, you’ve told me. But something, some monumental event I believe, triggered her sudden illness—perhaps learning a horrible truth that broke her heart. It is a mystery—why the mind reacts one way and the body, another. You see, I have conflicting reports about the disease that killed her: your daughter gave me a list of symptoms that my physician tells me sound like those caused by imbibing small doses of a toxic substance, not once but on several occasions. I wish he were here to explain it; his words make more sense than mine. Wouldn’t symptoms of a sarcoma be steadily progressive rather than fleeting and recurring? All I want is the truth.”

Notobene pitched forward on the edge of his seat. His face was crimson, his eyes bulging. “And I’m trying to oblige, you boorish cow!”

The door opened. “May I help, sir?” the butler asked, striding into the room and standing beside the baron’s chair.

The baron turned to his man. “Umbrello, shape up your staff, won’t you? Too bloody hot in here, and this grate should be cleaned, the embers buried. Shabby and thoughtless. No way to treat our guests. I want them to see a well-run house. If the baroness were alive, she’d be mortified!”

“Yes, sir. Very good, sir. I’ll have the footman—”

“Blast it! Wait until we’re finished, you oaf!”

“Yes, sir. Very good, sir.” He departed.

Notobene buried his head in his hands.

Retrieving a linen from her reticule, Rosa went to him and whispered in his ear.

Half-turning to her, he muttered something, walked to the mantelpiece and buried his head in his hands.

Rosa raised her arms. “What should we do?”

“For the moment, nothing,” Serafina said.

In a while, he wiped his brow and sat down again, not daring to look at them. “Forgive my behavior.”

“Nothing to forgive.” Rosa sat next to him.

In the corner, the clock’s pendulum ticked. Presently, the baron turned to Rosa. “First time I’ve realized she’s not … here … she won’t see our triumph … she’s dead, truly gone.” He covered his face.

Rosa stayed by his side for a long moment before returning to her seat.

“The physician who treated her, Doctor …” Serafina searched in her notes.

“Noce, Marcello Noce. An old friend, the family physician.”

“What words did he use to describe her illness?”

“At first, he thought it was some sort of dyspepsia, an influenza of some sort; she’d always been prone to stomach disorders. We’d recently returned from Egypt, and he thought perhaps she may have contracted a strange disease there. But soon he became puzzled.”

“He never suspected poison?”

He shrugged. “In the end, he convinced me that she suffered from a cancerous growth in her intestines or stomach. Couldn’t be certain, he said, unless he performed an operation, and he told me the surgery would probably result in the more rapid spread of the disease. I told him to keep her sedated; I wanted to make her end as peaceful as possible. Didn’t give me much hope, but I never doubted him, never, and I should have. I should have sought advice from others.” He slumped in his seat, and the clock ticked, and the men’s shouts on the wharf seemed to come from a distant star. “Perhaps Genoveffa is correct. Perhaps she was poisoned before my very eyes, and I did nothing.” His mind seemed far away.

Serafina looked out at the terrace, past the lush lawns to the world of commerce. It moved at a rapid pace, industrious, the bustle of tomorrow, so full of hope yet so unmindful of joy, of sorrow, or of the workings of the human heart.

The baron sat up. Polishing his pince-nez, he looked at Rosa and squeezed her hand. “Thank you.” He included Serafina in his gaze. “Sorry for my words. Investigate, both of you. Two days is much too short, and we’re almost finished with the first. Search everywhere. Leave no stone unturned, no fact unconsidered. I owe it to my wife. Had I been more—”

“Don’t blame yourself,” Rosa said, patting him on the arm.

Serafina looked away, considering the daunting nature of their task and the short time they had to accomplish it. “Do you know anyone who would want to poison your wife? Any of the servants, for instance?”

“None. All of the servants adored her. She was the beating heart of this house.” He dabbed his forehead with a linen.

“What about your business associates, those who knew she disliked them?”

He threw up his hands. “How could they? No access to her, for one thing, and for another, we never discuss family life.”

He was quiet for a long moment before continuing. “We are bereft without her. Adriana is still distraught, poor child. I don’t know what to do about her, and we’ve gone through nurses and governesses. This one seems the best, recommended by Doucette. We pay her enough, but half the time, I’m not sure she knows where the child is. She’s willful, like me, I suppose.” His smile was wan. “I should be spending more time with her …”

“She seems to like your father-in-law.”

He frowned. “Horrible man. Won’t see reason. Can’t understand what’s happening, so he buries his head. He has no money and won’t take any from me. A mess, but Adriana adores him.”