Death In Bagheria (A Serafina Florio Mystery) (14 page)

Dressing for Dinner

A
ft
er a good rest, Serafina heard a light tapping at the door.

“I hope I am not here too soon, Madame, but I will be happy to draw your bath and help you with your toilet. You have only an hour and a half before dinner, and the bishop has arrived,” Doucette said.

“I could use the help. My hair has always been a problem for me.”

“Not at all. Madame’s curls are lovely if perhaps hard to tame at times.” Doucette drew the bath and returned within the hour to help Serafina into her undergarments and gown, a deep royal blue organdy with a low neckline, the overskirt pulled back into a bustle.

“Jewelry?”

Serafina shook her head. “I travel with pearls and can fasten them myself,” she said, reaching into her bag and pulling out a long strand and earrings.

“While she worked on Serafina’s hair, Doucette said, “I heard about the theft of the journals. They talk of nothing else below stairs. How distressing for you. Have you found them?”

Serafina shook her head, declining to tell the housekeeper about the book forgotten in the hallway. “What do you think may have happened?”

Doucette shrugged. “Such a shame but I cannot begin to understand why anyone would steal such little books, unless someone wanted them in order to sell the covers. There are very many, and although each may fetch only pennies, for the needy, at least it is something.”

There was silence for a while as the housekeeper’s deft fingers worked.

“You are so talented, Doucette, do you hope to work as a hairdresser in Paris?”

“Madame is too kind, but Paris is the height of fashion, and I am afraid I am not talented enough to make money from hairdressing anymore. The styles have changed so much in ten years, but as you know, I have been working all my life and have no need to work anymore. I think it is time for me to enjoy the remaining days, no?”

Interesting, the housekeeper had amassed enough money so that with wise investment, she’d no longer need to find employment. While Doucette worked on her hair, Serafina let her mind roam. If she were honest, she could not imagine a life without laboring for pay. She’d been helping her mother with midwifery since the age of five and, for the past four years, worked as a sleuth whenever Oltramari’s commissioner sent for her. Not only did her stipend help to support the family, the effort engaged her mind and, yes, gave her the accolades of the townspeople but, in future, she thought she’d limit her activities to the boundaries of her city. Away from home, she had too little time with her children. She trusted that Teo and Maria weren’t fighting and that her grandson had gotten over the croup but, if not, that Carmela had called Loffredo. Serafina’s absence left her oldest daughter with a burden, she knew, even though Rosa’s cook agreed to feed her family when Renata was not at home. And lately, she seldom saw Carlo. She wondered if this is how it would be as soon as her children grew to his age. They’d leave, and she’d be without them. She shuddered, looked in the mirror, barely recognizing the woman who stared back at her.

Doucette had finished.

“You’ve done such a splendid job.”

The housekeeper beamed. As she turned to leave, Doucette said, “
Mon Dieu
, I almost forgot, the baron would like to see you in his study ten minutes before the dinner.”

Looking at her watch pin, Serafina retrieved the journal she’d found on the back stairs and locked it in her desk, then locked her room and descended, stopping only briefly on the second floor landing to open the heavy brass doors and, in the dim light, glance wistfully at the empty ballroom, imagining the commanding figure of Loffredo, her lover—yes, she missed him enough to say it—her dazzling lover, may the Son of the Madonna forgive her.

As she walked toward the baron’s study, a sudden movement caught her attention, and she looked down to see the scrunched figure of Adriana underneath a hall table, gazing up at her, a warning finger to her lips. Poor child—no mother, no playmates—so instead, she invented fantasy after fantasy, filling her life with the adventures created by imagination. In a sense, wasn’t she, Serafina, not doing the same?

“Is Ornetta hiding from you?” she
whispered. “Better go find her.”

D
inner with the
B
ishop

S
erafina spent the whole of the cocktail hour taking a sip or two of champagne, fingering tiny bits of food both unfamiliar and tasteless, smiling at and making inconsequential talk with the baron’s guests. She complimented the wife of a British businessman on her gown, discussed the price of bread and where to buy fabric with the sub-prefect’s wife while part of her mind pondered Lord Notobene’s response to the missing journals.

When
she had met with him in his office earlier, he’d assured her that although his men were not as yet successful in retrieving his wife’s books, he had no doubt that the incident was all the mistake of a misguided servant; that misplaced, his wife’s journals would turn up soon. “Any moment” were his exact words, perhaps lying in some forgotten corner of the villa waiting to be discovered, he surmised, and discovered they would be, of that he had no doubt. It occurred to Serafina that from everything she’d known about the baron—the bumbling nature of his responses to his wife’s illness, according to Genoveffa; his dismissal of Serafina’s question that afternoon about the mysterious cargo on the dock—she should have predicted his mishandling of the theft, turning it into a harmless almost amusing, if slightly annoying, incident and thereby sucking out the blood of its meaning. His concern was superficial as were all his observations and most of his reactions. The blandness of the food at Villa Caterina should not have surprised her. Were the nature of his judgments, his lack of discernment and taste prerequisites for his success in business? Was his innocence feigned? If he was not his wife’s poisoner, was he a willing accomplice? She didn’t think so, but he could have been, if not implicated under the law, at least an unwitting fool, and she disliked the man for that reason. Talking to him was like grappling with an eel: when she thought she had his measure, he had already slipped from her grasp. Although the grief he displayed that afternoon for his dead wife was real, a genuine and heartfelt emotion, this was an exception.

“You realize what the theft of these journals means?” she’d asked him.

“Let’s not make hasty conclusions.”

“Excuse me, my lord, but the journal Genoveffa gave me was taken from my grasp shortly after I left her office yesterday morning, returned with help from our
carabinieri
, but missing pages. This afternoon, forty-two of your wife’s journals were stolen from my locked room. This evening, Rosa retrieved the leather cover from a sack of outdoor clippings, its pages completely missing, and you are unconcerned. It seems to me that these crimes prove that your wife was murdered and that the murderer has long arms, reaching from Oltramari to your very household. The poisoner is afraid that your wife discovered his identity, and now he’s busy plucking away any danger to himself as if he were removing sweet figs from a child. Who is he? Why did he kill her? Who will be his next victim? You? Genoveffa? Your son? Your youngest daughter?”

The baron, however, did not hear her questions. He had placed both hands over his ears and closed his eyes. When she noticed this, she stopped.

“My dear, you are bordering on hysteria. If my response to the disappearance of Caterina’s journals is perhaps more—how should I say it—more circumspect, it is due, perhaps, to the difference in my station in life.”

Station in life?
She swallowed her response, vowed she’d find those journals and ferret out the truth no matter how long it took her to capture the killer, and in the meantime she’d sit through an insufferable evening wasting time. She must solve this mystery, and she’d already spent one whole day, had little to show for her efforts, and feared she’d be unable to keep the promise made to her children—that she’d return by Saturday at the latest.

Her limbs weary and her spirits low, she smiled at the poor woman sitting next to her during hors d’oeuvres and nodded in response to whatever it was the guest had said, her temples throbbing red bands of pain.

At dinner, a silver candelabra lit a long table filled with Limoges, silver, and crystal, its flames reflecting on a thousand shining surfaces. A few of the windows surrounding the glassed-in dining room were open to let in the fresh sea air, and the candles flickered in the breeze. Serafina’s headache began to lift as the servants presented dish after dish of food, but after a few bites, she despaired of eating anything that pleased her palate. Poor Renata, forced to follow the directions of that sweet and well-meaning but decidedly uninspired cook. At one point during the meal, Serafina caught Rosa’s eye, and she knew that her friend had the same opinion of the food.

The guests responded in kind, sitting as if made of wood throughout a ponderous meal of endless courses, the first of which consisted of a series of smallish foods, gifts from the sea no doubt, but foreign to Serafina. Next, a pasta con le sarde, not too bad, was followed by a lemon ice. The silver bowls cleared, servers brought in a veal and eggplant dish preceding the main course, a roast of mutton and potatoes with artichoke hearts in honor of the baron’s British guests, and finally coffee and dessert, a cassata decorated with marzipan figures of British soldiers, doubtless the artistry of her daughter.

The seating arrangements could not have been worse as far as Serafina was concerned. She found herself facing the wife of the British businessman again, the poor woman with whom she’d had a brief but uninspired conversation earlier in the evening. Serafina felt trapped between the baron’s son on her left and Don Tigro on her right, who barely moved throughout the meal, smiling a little at his host and commenting less. All in all, it was a deft performance from a man used to spending his waking hours among thugs—she had to give him that—but at least, she had a chance to whisper her concerns for Betta to which he muttered, “Better. The doctor visits her often,” a reference to Loffredo, no doubt, and she forced herself not to bathe her mind in his name.

To the baron’s left sat the bishop, a smiling man with little to say, but Rosa seemed to know him. As she sat next to his excellency, she talked and laughed gaily, doing her best to entertain the cleric, to the apparent relief of their host. To the baron’s right, the sub-prefect and his wife were correctly polite, especially to the baron’s British guests, with whom they seemed on friendly terms.

To make conversation with the baron’s son, who so far had sat wordlessly at the foot of the table, Serafina cleared her throat and addressed him. “I saw the most interesting crates piled one on top of the other on the wharf this morning before they were loaded onto your steamer.”

Her remark caused a sudden silence. The British gentleman glared at Naldo, whose neck and face flushed. The rest of the guests grew silent, waiting for Naldo’s response, but he offered none. Don Tigro stopped chewing, and Serafina regarded him closely as he stared straight ahead at the painting above the sideboard. For a moment, he moved not a muscle; then as if nothing had happened, he continued eating his meal.

Her curiosity piqued, Serafina persisted. “Perhaps you are unaware of the cargo to which I refer? The boxes were marked with strange red lettering, a language with which I am not familiar. Could it have been Sanskrit or perhaps Chinese?” There was another moment of silence. Serafina glanced at Rosa’s face, but it was unreadable. Correcting herself since Naldo shrugged and regarded his plate as if he had not heard the question, she continued. “No, of course not, how silly of me, it wasn’t Chinese, I know that much.”

Naldo looked at her with trapped eyes but still made no reply, even though Serafina waited, knife and fork poised while he simply looked through her to Don Tigro. He in turn stared at Naldo, then resumed stuffing food into his mouth.

Without warning, there was the sound of silver on glass, like the tinkling of a bell and all eyes turned to the head of the table where, as soon as he commanded their attention, the baron raised his glass in a toast to his wife’s memory and her beloved feast of the Annunciation. Far be it from him, Serafina thought, to answer her question, to endure any more discomfort than necessary, or to question his son about the cargo.

All raised their glasses and drank, saluting Lady Caterina’s memory.

Serafina’s question was unanswered.

Afterward, the men disappeared into the withdrawing room for brandy. As she followed the other women into the ladies’ sitting room, Serafina wondered what the baroness would have thought of the evening. This much was clear: with her death, Villa Caterina had lost its soul. She had no doubt of the baron’s love for his wife; that was the one thing she understood about him. Would the baroness have known about the cargo? Probably not, she did not interest herself in the baron’s affairs. But his part in her death, in the running of the house, and in his business affairs, he was still a mystery. And she wondered whether the baron knew about the cargo. She thought not, judging from his vague response to her question concerning the crates earlier in the day.

Serafina cornered Rosa. “We need to talk.”

Her friend closed her eyes and nodded. “Later.”

Excusing herself, Serafina entered the powder room and locked the door. She sat down at a small dressing table, fished in her reticule for a comb, and paused, remembering that although she and Rosa had searched the ladies’ parlor earlier, they’d neglected to look in here. Putting away her comb, she opened a small door in front of her. Empty. She went over to the cabinets and looked in all the drawers, but found nothing. As she was about to remove the cushions of the gilded love seat in the corner, there was a soft tapping.

“So sorry,” Serafina said as she twisted the lock and opened the door.

“We thought you might be ill,” the British woman said, “and we became concerned. But I see that you’re all right. Carry on, do, I shan’t disturb you further.”

“All finished,” Serafina said and thanked the woman for her concern.