Murder on Waverly Place

by Victoria Thompson

  “Did you hear that, Mrs. Brandt?” Mrs. Ellsworth asked. “She told me where to look for my husband’s watch.”

  “Yes, I heard,” Sarah said, watching Serafina for any change of expression, but she saw none. “Where do you think it could be?”

  “The letter B,” Mrs. Ellsworth mused. “That could be the bedroom, of course. Or perhaps the bureau.”

  Sarah could think of dozens of words starting with B that could provide hiding places for a watch. She’d point that out to Mrs. Ellsworth later, however.

  “How do you do that?” Mrs. Ellsworth was asking her. “How do you know things about people, I mean?”

  “It is a gift,” Serafina replied simply. “I cannot help it.”

  “I found a penny this morning when I was on my way to the market,” Mrs. Ellsworth told Sarah. “That’s good luck, you know. I picked it up, of course. You must pick it up or it won’t be good luck. I just knew something good was going to happen today.”

  Sarah didn’t mention that Mrs. Ellsworth hadn’t actually found the missing watch yet.

  When Serafina had finished the sandwich, she looked up to where Sarah stood pouring tea for all of them. “I know you think I am protecting Nicola, but he did not do this thing. It was one of the others. I know it was. You have to help me find out which one.”

  “But my dear,” Mrs. Ellsworth said without a trace of irony, “can’t you just ask the spirits to tell you?”

  9

  SARAH HAD TO SWALLOW THE BARK OF LAUGHTER THAT rose up in her throat. If she laughed, Serafina would never trust her again. But Serafina wasn’t looking at Sarah at all. She was speaking to Mrs. Ellsworth.

  “I have tried to ask them,” she said solemnly, “but they will not speak to me about this.”

  “Whyever not?” Mrs. Ellsworth asked, outraged on her new friend’s behalf.

  “I do not know. Perhaps Mrs. Gittings is blocking the message because she is angry with me.”

  “So how do you propose to find out who really killed this Mrs. Gittings?” Mrs. Ellsworth asked.

  Serafina glanced at Sarah. “I do not know.”

  Mrs. Ellsworth patted her hand reassuringly. “Well, you’ve come to the right place. Mrs. Brandt is an expert at finding murderers.”

  “She is?” Serafina exclaimed as Sarah winced.

  “Oh, yes, she’s helped Detective Sergeant Malloy solve dozens of cases.”

  “Not dozens,” Sarah protested, although sometimes it did seem like it. “Just a . . . a few.”

  “Then you can help me,” Serafina said with relief. “The spirits have not deserted me at all. They have led me to you.”

  Sarah took a seat at the table and passed the sugar bowl to her guests so they could sweeten their tea. “You’ll have to help me before I can help you,” she said. “You have to tell me everything you know about everyone involved. If we have any hope at all of saving Nicola, we must find the real killer.”

  “Mrs. Brandt said your Nicola was playing a violin all through the séance, so he couldn’t be the killer,” Mrs. Ellsworth said.

  “That is right, he was.”

  “How do we know it wasn’t just one of the gramophone records?” Sarah challenged.

  “Because we do not have the violin on a record,” Serafina replied. “We do not know what the spirits will say, so Nicola must listen and play music to suit what happens. We can go back to the house so you can see we have no such records. I promise, you will see this is true.”

  “He could have been walking around the room in the dark, though, and stabbed Mrs. Gittings while he was playing,” Sarah tried.

  “He never comes out of the cabinet,” Serafina insisted.

  “That would be very difficult to prove,” Sarah argued.

  “But playing a violin takes two hands,” Mrs. Ellsworth pointed out. “How could he hold a knife? And if the room was dark enough that they couldn’t see him, how could he see where Mrs. Gittings was to stab her?”

  “Did everyone always sit in the same place at the table?” Sarah asked.

  “No,” Serafina said. “I tell them where to sit each time, and she is right, he could not see Mrs. Gittings in the dark.”

  But Sarah was pretty sure it would be easy enough to memorize the layout of the room, and if Serafina told people where to sit . . . Well, finding Mrs. Gittings would certainly be possible. That’s what Malloy would say, anyway.

  The sound of running feet distracted them, and Catherine raced into the room to remind them it was time to cook supper. Maeve took charge of the kitchen, and all conversation about murder ceased in deference to Catherine’s tender years.

  THE NEXT MORNING, FRANK HAD JUST ARRIVED AT POLICE Headquarters when he got an urgent message from Professor Rogers, asking him to return to the house. Frank was sure Nicola wouldn’t have shown his face there again, which was the only reason he could imagine that the Professor would call him back, but he made the trip down to Waverly Place just in case.

  The Professor answered Frank’s knock and ushered him inside after looking around to see if anyone was lurking out on the street.

  “The newspapermen were here for hours last night,” the Professor informed him as if he thought it was Frank’s fault.

  “Did you tell them anything?”

  “No, but the neighbors . . . I saw them asking people questions.”

  “The story was in the evening editions,” Frank told him, “but they don’t have much of it right. If they don’t get wind of who the clients were, they’ll lose interest.”

  The Professor sniffed in disdain.

  “Is that why you sent for me?” Frank asked in annoyance. “To complain about the newspapermen?”

  “No, I want to report a robbery.”

  “A robbery? What was stolen?”

  “Several thousand dollars,” the Professor reported. Plainly, he was furious and controlling it with great difficulty.

  Frank studied him for a long moment. “Is this the money that Mrs. Gittings was holding for Serafina and Nicola?”

  “It was all the money,” he said bitterly.

  “Where did you keep it?”

  “Locked in a safe.”

  Frank remembered seeing a safe in the narrow space behind the false wall. “When did you find out it was missing?”

  “This morning.”

  Frank was growing increasingly irritated with the Professor’s miserly answers. “Show me the safe.”

  “It’s in here,” he said, and as Frank expected, he led him to the narrow space behind the false wall.

  The morning sun filtered through the curtain, showing the dust motes hanging in the stale air. Frank had noticed the safe in the far end of the space yesterday, but hadn’t given it any particular significance. Now the door hung open, and the safe was clearly empty.

  “Is this how you found it?”

  “No, it was locked.”

  It had been closed when Frank saw it yesterday. “Why did you open it?”

  “I . . . I thought I might need some money.”

  Frank wondered idly if the Professor had decided to take the money and disappear himself, before Serafina could lay claim to it. “Who had the combination?”

  “Just Mrs. Gittings and myself,” he said.

  “Maybe she put the money someplace else,” Frank suggested, thinking she might have put it someplace the Professor couldn’t find it.

  “No, it was all there yesterday, right before the séance,” he said. “I collected the fees from everyone and put them into the safe while Madame was greeting the guests, just like I always do, and everything was fine then.”

  “Are you sure you locked it?”

  “Of course,” the Professor snapped, losing his battle to control his anger. “Don’t you see what happened? That little rat stole it!”

  “What little rat? You mean DiLoreto?”

  “Of course I mean DiLoreto. Who else could have done it?”

  “I thought he didn’t know the combination,” Frank
reminded him.

  “He’s a sneaky little bastard,” the Professor said through gritted teeth. “Who knows what he knew? Maybe he knows how to crack safes.”

  Frank doubted the boy would have been working for a phony spiritualist if he knew how to crack safes, but he decided not to mention that to the Professor. He was already upset enough. “If DiLoreto stole this money . . . How much was it, again?”

  “I don’t know exactly, but it was over five thousand dollars,” the Professor told him, seething at the very thought.

  “I saw him right before he ran off,” Frank recalled, picturing the boy in his mind with his slim figure dressed in tightly fitting black clothes, which were ideally suited for slipping into and out of cabinets without catching on corners. “He wasn’t carrying anything, and he couldn’t have had that much money stuffed in his pockets.”

  “He must have come back for it last night, while I was asleep. He has a key to the house.”

  “That still doesn’t explain how he got into the safe.”

  “I told you—”

  “I know, he’s a safe cracker. Or maybe you left it unlocked.”

  “I didn’t leave it unlocked, I tell you.”

  “Have you searched the rest of the house? Just in case Mrs. Gittings put the money someplace else?” Frank prodded.

  “I searched,” he said, his face now an alarming shade of purple, “even though she was dead, as you will recall, and couldn’t have put it someplace else.”

  “Who else knew the safe was there?”

  “Nobody. Just the four of us. No one else ever came into this room.”

  “Did Serafina know how to open the safe?”

  “No. I told you, we would never have given either of them the combination. If they got the money, they would have run off.”

  This was all very interesting, but Frank really didn’t care what had happened to the money. Except that if Nicola had it, they’d never see him again. He probably would have gone back to Italy by now.

  “When we find DiLoreto, we’ll ask him about this,” Frank told him.

  “And what am I supposed to do in the meantime?” the Professor asked furiously.

  Frank wanted to suggest he get an honest job, but he said, “That’s up to you.”

  This was not the answer the Professor wanted to hear. “When will Serafina come back? She has clients scheduled today.”

  “That’s up to her. I’ll mention it to her when I see her.”

  “And what are you going to do about this?” he demanded, gesturing angrily toward the open safe.

  “I’ll file a report, and keep looking for DiLoreto.”

  The Professor swore a colorful oath that told Frank he wasn’t as cultured as he pretended to be.

  Frank decided he wouldn’t wait to visit Sarah’s house. He wanted to find out what Serafina knew about the missing money.

  MAEVE OPENED THE DOOR AND GREETED HIM WARMLY, followed by Catherine, who threw herself into his arms.

  “I’m getting married,” she informed him when he’d picked her up.

  “Who’s the lucky fellow?” Frank asked in amusement.

  Catherine giggled. “I’m getting married,” she repeated, holding up one small palm and pointing to a specific spot. “See, right there.”

  “Madame Serafina was reading our palms this morning,” Maeve told him with some amusement of her own.

  Frank nodded his understanding. “And are you getting married, too, Maeve?”

  “Of course,” Maeve assured him with a gleam in her eye the only clue that she wasn’t perfectly serious. “All single young ladies are going to get married. Even Mrs. Brandt,” she added archly.

  Before Frank could react to this amazing piece of information, Sarah Brandt called his name.

  “Malloy,” she said, coming toward him through the front room. She was smiling the way she always did when she first saw him. Well, almost always. If there was no dead body involved. “You’re out early this morning.”

  “I couldn’t wait to see my favorite girl,” he said and watched her eyebrows rise in surprise before turning to Catherine, whom he still held in his arms. “And now she tells me she’s getting married.”

  Catherine laughed in delight.

  “Have you found Nicola?”

  They all turned to where Serafina stood. She’d followed Sarah out of the kitchen and was standing in the middle of the office, her hands clenched tightly at her waist. She looked very different today. She was wearing an ordinary dress instead of that black flowing thing she’d had on yesterday, and her hair was down and tied with a ribbon. She could have been a schoolgirl.

  “No, I haven’t,” he said. “I thought the Professor might offer a reward, but it seems someone has stolen all of his money.”

  Sarah and Maeve gasped in surprise, but Serafina’s reaction was much milder. She simply lifted her chin, almost defiantly.

  “When did this happen?” Sarah asked.

  “Sometime between when the séance started yesterday and this morning. The Professor thinks Nicola came back in the night. He has a key to the house.”

  “He does not know the combination to the safe,” Serafina said.

  “Do you?” Frank asked curiously.

  Her dark eyes blazed. “Of course not. Mrs. Gittings, she would never trust us. She was afraid we would take the money and run away.”

  “Maeve, why don’t you take Catherine over to visit Mrs. Ellsworth?” Sarah suggested.

  Catherine made some inarticulate sounds of protest, but Maeve predicted she would receive a treat at Mrs. Ellsworth’s and promised to bring her back before Mr. Malloy left again. After a few minutes, Maeve had her buttoned into a jacket and out the door.

  “Come in and have some coffee with us, Malloy,” Sarah said.

  They all filed into the kitchen, and Sarah poured coffee for them. Malloy usually felt comfortable here in Sarah’s kitchen, but Madame Serafina’s unease was affecting them all. She sat stiffly in her chair, making no effort to taste the coffee or even to make eye contact.

  “Does Nicola know how to break into a safe?” he asked baldly when the silence had stretched for a while.

  “What?” Serafina asked. Plainly, this was not what she’d been expecting to be asked.

  “Does he know how to break into a safe?” Frank repeated. “Somebody opened the safe, took the money out, and locked it back up again so the Professor wouldn’t know it was gone until he went looking for it.”

  “Nicola does not know anything about safes,” Serafina said.

  “Then what happened to the money?”

  “How should I know?” Serafina snapped. She was angry. Not as angry as the Professor had been, but still angry. “Maybe he hides the money and pretends it is stolen to get Nicola in more trouble.”

  Frank hadn’t considered this possibility, but the Professor had seemed genuinely upset. He’d looked like a man who had been robbed. “What about you?” Frank asked. “Do you know anything about safes?”

  She seemed shocked. “No!”

  Frank took a sip of his coffee. “If Nicola took the money, he’s probably on his way back to Italy by now,” he observed mildly.

  “He will not leave me,” Serafina said with the confidence only young love can produce. Frank noticed she didn’t deny he’d taken the money, though.

  He turned to Sarah. “Have you found out anything new?”

  “Not really,” she said, glancing at Serafina. “But I did remember something I didn’t tell you yesterday.”

  “What’s that?” he asked with a frown.

  “I was telling you about Mr. Sharpe, about how I smelled roses when he was talking to his wife’s spirit,” she reminded him. “But before I could tell you everything, you ran out of the room.”

  Frank nodded. That was when he’d remembered about the space behind the cabinet and gone to look at it himself. “What else do you know about him?”

  “Remember Serafina said he wanted to take her away from Mrs. Gitt
ings and set her up in her own house?” she asked, glancing at Serafina again. “In the séance I attended, he was asking his wife for advice about something, and Serafina told him to follow his heart.”

  “I told him nothing!” she protested. “The spirits tell him. I do not even know what they say!”

  Sarah ignored her. Obviously, she had forgotten she had confessed to having Yellow Feather tell the clients what Mrs. Gittings wanted them to hear. “He was thinking about doing something dangerous, and Serafina told him not to be afraid.”

  “I told him nothing!” Serafina insisted.

  “The spirits then,” Sarah conceded generously. “Someone told him not to be afraid and to follow his heart.”

  “What was he thinking about doing that was dangerous?” Frank asked Serafina.

  “I do not know,” she said sullenly. “You will have to ask him.”

  Frank rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Now that’s a problem,” he said, “because Mr. Sharpe is a rich man with powerful friends. I can’t ask him anything, because if I do, I’ll lose my job.”

  Serafina looked at him in surprise. “But you are the police.”

  People like Serafina, powerless people with no money, were terrified of the police.

  “Mr. Malloy is right,” Sarah was saying. “People like Mr. Sharpe and . . . Well, like all the people at the séance, they don’t have to be afraid of the police.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because . . .” Sarah was searching for an explanation the girl could understand.

  “Because they have enough money to buy their way out of trouble,” Frank explained for her.

  “Is this true?” she asked Sarah, outraged.

  “I’m afraid it is.”

  “Even if one of them killed Mrs. Gittings?” the girl asked.

  “Probably,” Frank said. “No one wants to protect Nicola except you, and the others would be happy to see him charged with the murder, guilty or not, because that would mean they wouldn’t have to worry about any scandal touching them.”

  The girl’s eyes filled with tears. “Mrs. Brandt, you cannot let him blame Nicola for this! He is innocent!”