Murder On The Rue Cassette (A Serafina Florio Mystery)

by Susan Russo Anderson

  Serafina was lost in the meaning of his words, but listened to the emotion behind them. She wondered how she might change the subject to something more, what to say, more earthbound and practical, like where to find Elena. The man the others called Camille and his wife broke away with a smile and were engulfed in a knot of artists waiting to greet them.

  Serafina and her group were interrupted by a woman with a tray of canapés and deviled eggs. She directed them to a table filled with other hors d’oeuvres and drinks—more trays heaped with crudités, trays with a selection of cheeses and fruits, and of course bottles of beer and wine. Visitors swarmed the table.

  “Get some food now before it’s gone. This is a hungry crowd,” their host said.

  “Hungry for words, you mean,” someone said.

  “Hungry for meaning.”

  “Hungry to feed our souls.”

  “Hungry to attain the highest perfection.”

  “Hungry for music.”

  There was no way to change the subject, unless she made it happen, Serafina realized and was about to ask someone, anyone about Elena when Carmela broke in.

  “Excuse me, but we came to the party not only to be at the heart of artistic thought, but to search for a friend of ours from our home town. I wonder if you know her, Elena Loffredo,” she said to a group gathered around them.

  No one replied until a painter said, “I’d love to paint you, your hair, such golden reds, your skin, so lovely.”

  Serafina frowned at his threadbare jacket, the smudge of paint on the collar of his shirt and his purple nose. She heard a few others reply to Carmela but couldn’t catch the words, except for the pleading man in painter’s smock.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Arcangelo, somehow separated from Teo, bending toward a woman who was trying to talk to him, the woman stumbling slightly and sipping from a wine glass, refilling it herself from the bottle she held in her hand. She touched Arcangelo on the cheek with full lips and watched as he pulled at his sleeves. Serafina grabbed Carmela and the two went over to rescue him.

  “I asked her if she knew Elena,” Arcangelo said, rouge smeared on his cheek. His face was flushed, his eyes, pleading.

  “Victorine,” Carmela said, “how lovely to see you.” She introduced Serafina. Rosa joined them.

  “We hear that Elena is in the south of France.”

  “Who told you? Weren’t s’posed to say anything.”

  “Oh well, we knew but not from anyone in the room. Arles?”

  “Not sure. Arles or Aix-en-Provence, someplace down there. Think I might have the address in my studio.” She gulped her wine. “Woman thinks she’s a painter. Nonsense. Fraud. Slut. What does she know of painting, of ... posing?”

  Serafina watched her, fascinated. Her face was divine. She could see why artists loved to paint her.

  “But poor, lost Elena. I don’t blame her. She’s at the end of the line and knows it. If you want to see real art, come to my studio, I’ll show you.”

  “We’d love to, Carmela said. “When?”

  She waved a hand. “Anytime.”

  “But give us the address. Tomorrow?”

  Victorine gave them the address of her studio on the Rue Maître Albert. “You know it? Small, narrow street. Left bank, hidden. The quiet of Paris afternoons gathers in my studio.”

  “We’d love to see your work.” Remembering Victorine had offered once to show Tessa her studio but hadn’t shown up at the appointed hour, Carmela added. “We’re looking for works to add to our collection.”

  The rest of the evening was a drag for Serafina. The talk was too heady for her, and she longed to be with Loffredo. Besides, she’d gotten what she wanted. One look at Tessa, however, and Serafina knew they must stay. Mallarmé recited his poetry to a hushed audience. Afterward he introduced, a young boy called Debussy, a twelve-year-old student at the Paris Conservatory. They rolled out a grand piano from the far corner and the boy sat and played. Serafina thought of how much Maria was missing and of how cruel she’d been not to let her daughter come with them.

  Chapter 30: Les Halles

  Serafina gazed around the large lobby, looking for Loffredo who said he’d meet them there, but she didn’t see him. She examined her watch, close to midnight. Perhaps he’d gotten tired of waiting for them. She didn’t blame him. They were tired, but also hungry. “Famished,” was the word Rosa used.

  In a few minutes she saw Teo and Arcangelo talking and laughing with someone in the far corner of the room. Loffredo. He smiled at Rosa, came around to Carmela and told her how beautiful she was, then to Serafina and took her in his arms.

  “I’ve been waiting all night for you.”

  “Let’s go to one of the restaurants in the hotel and we can order—”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” he said. “I want to show all of you a sight you won’t believe. But you must promise to tell Renata about it.”

  “Do they have food?” Rosa asked. “All we had to eat were some little doughy things. And the conversation, you wouldn’t believe. Lucky you weren’t there. Tonight I’ve been buried in words, words that mean nothing to me.”

  “Artistic thought, it was enchanting,” Tessa said.

  “I know, my pet. But it’s hard for my mind to soar without food. This place better be good,” Rosa said to Loffredo.

  “You can order anything you want, and it’s a place that never sleeps. Vendors come from all over France. It’ll be an experience you won’t forget.”

  Carmela, Tessa, and Rosa needed to freshen up in their rooms, and while they waited for them, Loffredo told Serafina about his evening with Valois.

  “We went in search of the man that accompanied Elena the night of the opening. You gave it to me, an address on the Rue d’Assas. And when I looked to find it on the map, I noticed it was next door to a monastery.”

  “You talk of Étienne Gaston.”

  He nodded. “His home is directly in back of the Rue Cassette, near the spot where the murdered woman was found. I could imagine someone carrying the body through their gardens, out the back gate and dumping it onto the Rue Cassette.”

  “And have the police begun to question him?”

  “Not really. He and Valois exchanged polite conversation, that’s all.”

  Serafina told him she’d spoken to Gaston. “He was the man last seen with Elena by her friends, and to tell you the truth, I’m not sure about him. He loves Elena, or at least had a passionate affair with her, but she toyed with him and her behavior inflamed his fury. I could see him killing her in a jealous rage. He had motive, means, and opportunity. And yet ...” She told him of the couple’s intimacy on the night of the murder, Elena’s disappearance, Gaston’s walking the streets of Paris to assuage his turmoil. “He saw the murdered woman in the Rue Cassette, told me he’d bent over her body to make sure she was not Elena.”

  “His means?” he asked.

  She told him about the revolver he said was missing from his desk. “And as yet, the police do nothing.”

  “Not surprising. He’s an important scholar. If the crime had been committed in Oltramari, he would not be questioned at all.”

  “But then, neither would you,” Serafina said.

  “So why are you unsure about him? You think he may have murdered the woman in a state of madness, thinking she was Elena?”

  “It’s possible.” She told Loffredo about seeing Elena’s dress in the storefront of a nettoyage à sec on the Rue Cassette, of learning that Gaston had taken the garment there to be cleaned. “And he lied to me about that, and about how long he and Elena were together.”

  Loffredo brushed a hand over his chin.

  They sat in silence, gazing at one another.

  “What do you think happened to Elena? You must have seen her change. Think back on the first time she left for Paris. All of a sudden she decides to leave Oltramari. Had she been talking about it for some time? Did she take a trip and when she returned? Did she seem wistful and then leave
and never come back?”

  He planted a kiss on Serafina’s cheek. “Why do you want to know? Why all of a sudden?”

  “It’s important, a very important question, something I need to know in order to understand what happened to Elena. I’m on the brink of putting it all together, but I’ve neglected a very important piece—her moods.”

  “Well ...” He thought for a moment. “Hard to remember, it was so long ago. Elena was always hard to pin down. She was a selfish woman.”

  “Is a selfish woman,” Serafina corrected.

  He nodded, smiling a little wistfully, she thought.

  He continued. “She is petulant. Moody. I never knew what her reactions would be to anything, where her mind, her head would be. Trust me, she always was a surprise. I mean, always. Her father, you know, her father tried to capture her mind, mold her character.”

  “To a point.”

  “Yes, he tried to a point. Elena was spoiled. And now I understand what spoiled means. Her parents ruined her life,” he said.

  “In a sense, they killed her,” Serafina said.

  They were silent for a time.

  “But her father did try to involve her in his business. This was long before I met her—he told me the story. And she was making progress understanding millinery, but all of a sudden one day she left the store and didn’t return. Never. He asked her why, and she had no reply, barely remembered working for him at the shop. He said he’d furnished an office for her where she spent a good deal of time learning about the business and fabrics and meeting their suppliers and working with the designers. But suddenly she became a different person. She decided that millinery wasn’t for her and hadn’t bothered to tell him.”

  Arcangelo listened, his attention unflagging.

  Loffredo turned to him. “Have you ever met such a person?”

  “Yes. My grandmother. We had to move her to a hospital, I don’t know if La Signura remembers, but we lived in our own home and all of a sudden she thought she was one of La Signura’s women and she asked La Signura for better clothes. She said she needed a fancier nightgown. She became belligerent. We were embarrassed. Finally we had to bring her to Santa Maria, the hospital the sisters ran, you know the one I mean. But she was losing her mind. That’s what Papa said.”

  Startled, Serafina stared at him, then at Loffredo. A volume passed between them in a second.

  By this time Carmela, Rosa, and Tessa had returned and were listening to the conversation.

  “So when one day she announced she had tickets to Paris and wanted to live there, I was surprised, but not astounded. This was Elena. I remember telling her I couldn’t possibly leave my practice and she told me that she didn’t expect me to live there with her, that she wanted to explore other paths. That’s how she put it, and in the next few minutes, she was gone. She had a small bag packed before she’d even talked to me. I looked out and saw the carriage waiting for her. She’d gotten the ticket on her own, and the first time she told me was when it was time to leave.”

  “Left all her frocks behind?” Rosa asked.

  “Everything. Her jewels, her clothes, her shoes, her purses, everything.”

  “So departing suddenly for the Midi is something in keeping with her character?”

  He nodded. “A sudden and total leaving. That’s in keeping with her character, if you can call it that. Not the painting part. I’ve never known her to be so intent on an art form. After all, being an artist involves years and years of study, of painting hours every day, hard labor, many skills must come together. It’s a unique way of seeing the world. And the artist’s vision and endless labor create and perfect a unique style. It’s work, hard work, endless work. Elena was not ever into work. So that aspect is new for her. She gets an idea and changes so rapidly. But now I think she’s become too enthralled with herself. She is her own caricature.”

  “Let’s go before we’ve passed breakfast and missed yet another meal,” Rosa said.

  “Place St. Eustache, driver.”

  “This better not be a church,” Rosa said.

  The drive took only a few minutes. In fact, they could have walked. And when they arrived, Serafina could not believe her eyes.

  “These are the pavilions of Les Halles, the teeming heart of Paris,” Loffredo said.

  “It looks like the teeming stomach of Paris to me,” Rosa said, a smile on her face.

  “And if you’re interested in eating the freshest of foods, there are restaurants and cafés here where we may feast,” Loffredo said.

  Serafina breathed in, smelling onions and vegetables, the earth, fish, meat, lilacs, lavender, the distillation of flowers from the south, the honest sweat of farmers and fishermen, whoever worked as vendors selling to the restauranteurs, the hospitals, the people of Paris. People were everywhere, men in berets with cigarettes dangling from their lips, young boys in shorts, women in long black skirts and homespun aprons, their hands swollen from work. They packed the streets around a rotund cast iron edifice in front of two other pavilions. Workers unloaded large covered horse carts, piling produce onto wagons pulled by men and even some women into the stalls. The stalls were filled with flowers, with great slabs of meat, with cheese, with fish perched on ice, their tails turned up with freshness. Horns honked. People yelled to one another, their voices swallowed up in the great volume of air. The sounds cascaded off of cast iron pillars. People stomped in every direction. Buyers swarmed around the stalls, the vendors weighing and bickering and wrapping the produce.

  “You’ve eaten here?” Serafina yelled to Loffredo who was standing next to her.

  “I come here to lose my worries after escorting Elena.”

  They passed a small bar open to the street, a few tables scattered outside. Pedestrians skirted around them. At a table sat a man and woman, both disheveled, both bleary, quite drunk, the man especially. He had ragged hair and red and purple capillaries. He tried to stand but was unable. In their glasses was an opaque white liquid.

  “Absinthe drinkers,” Loffredo said. “The ruin of many.”

  Serafina could see the moisture in her daughter’s eyes.

  Carmela looked at Loffredo as if seeing him for the first time. “I’ve misjudged you. Forgive me.”

  “Please, don’t trouble yourself. I love your mother. You think I might take her from you. And I just might. I understand your fear.”

  Rosa rolled her eyes. “Show us a restaurant before I faint. You know it so well, you pick it out.”

  “We want to walk around,” Teo said. He and Arcangelo disappeared.

  “If you lose us, you know the way back to the hotel,” Serafina called after them.

  Loffredo took them to a bistro in the pavilion with starched tablecloths and waiters in long aprons holding round trays. They were seated in the front where Teo and Arcangelo had a better chance of finding them.

  “Order what you want, it’s on me, but please consider the onion soup. You won’t have a better bowl,” Loffredo said.

  “Sorry, I cannot let you pay,” Serafina said. “Let Busacca buy us dinner.”

  They started with the soup, dipping crusty pieces of warm baguettes into the hot broth, loading them up with onion and cheese before savoring the rich flavor and slurping them into their mouths. Serafina said she was content with the soup and perhaps she would try one of the pigs feet. Loffredo and Tessa ordered the same. Rosa decided on a slab of beef smothered in fat, swimming in juices, and surrounded by potatoes, carrots, and onions. When they returned, Teo and Arcangelo ate sausage and sauerkraut after finishing a bowl of pea soup.

  They rose to leave, tired and happy. Serafina could see the night sky disappearing, a smear of pale cerulean and rose madder in the east. She smelled the morning, heard the tired shouts of the vendors. Another day.

  * * *

  Serafina’s head ached. It was past noon. She’d had no café, and the others were not yet awake. It was not how she imagined being in Paris with Loffredo, sitting in the lobby of the H�
�tel du Louvre with him and talking about Gaston with Inspector Valois, repeating her words of last night.

  When she was finished, Valois, who’d written everything down, said he’d send a few of his men to bring him in for questioning. “Perhaps today.”

  Serafina nodded. “I know he prepares an important paper. He intends to address the Académie des Sciences on some matter or other. It sounded important and I have it in my notes somewhere, but you’ll forgive me, I’m not quite—”

  “I took Madame Florio and her party to Les Halles last night,” Loffredo explained.

  “After we’d spent the evening at the salon they call Les Mardistes,” Serafina said, and summarized what they’d learned there from Elena’s friends.

  “When Carmela said she’d heard Elena was in the south of France, a painter’s response was ‘Who told you? Weren’t supposed to say anything.’ Carmela’s at the woman’s studio now to see if she might have Elena’s address.”

  Valois made no reply. He rubbed his lapels and narrowed his gaze. Serafina noticed a tremor in his hand.

  “But I called for you on another important matter. The order of exhumation has been issued by the court, a rabbi summoned, and the body is to be unearthed one week from tomorrow in Versailles. Because he examined the body, Dr. Mélange will also accompany us. I’ve contacted Madame de Masson. She sent word that she and her two sons will be there.”

  Serafina felt tired, not elated.

  Valois seemed subdued.

  There was a knock and Carmela entered. She threw her reticule on the bed and crossed her arms. “I traipsed all the way to Maître Albert and that woman wasn’t there. This is the second time. How can she paint when he’s never in her studio? Impossible!” She turned and saw Valois. “Forgive me. I had no idea.”

  “I’ve told the inspector we’re searching for Elena’s address in the south.”

  “We have an old address in Arles, but Loffredo thinks she’s no longer there. In the past, she’s let an apartment.”

  “Perhaps we may be able to help,” Valois said.