Death In Bagheria (A Serafina Florio Mystery)

by Susan Russo Anderson

  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.”

  Naldo

  “You weren’t here when your mother died, I understand.” They sat in the baron’s study below the portrait of the baroness. Rosa occupied the overstuffed chair; Naldo, the son, perched on an arm of the sofa, swinging one leg back and forth, and Serafina in the chair opposite him.

  He shook his head. “In Glasgow. I needed to be there to supervise the building of our ship to Father’s explicit instructions. He’s a perfectionist, Father, must have everything his way, down to the smallest detail. But to be fair, this perfectionism of his accounts for his success, that and the alliances he’s been able to forge of late.” He paused, canted his eyes from one side to another. “Alliances that were odious to his wife.”

  Rosa shot Serafina a veiled look.

  Serafina narrowed her eyes and took a good look at the baron’s son while she waited in silence for him to continue. He was a younger, clean-shaven version of his father, the face almost naked of remark, and taller, bonier, with fair skin and auburn curls—his coloring inherited, perhaps, from his mother. Serafina’s immediate response was to dislike him, and she fought with herself to dash the preconceptions out of her mind. “Send them into the sea,” she heard her mother counsel. With a pure heart, that’s how she must conduct her investigation. After all, she owed it to the baroness, to Genoveffa, and to the truth. Besides, what had this young man done to her, except be born into nobility and wealth? The first-born male, he’d inherit most of his father’s fortune, his lands, business, and title. Was it envy, this worm inside her?

  Still, he didn’t speak, but swung that dratted leg back and forth, back and forth. She could wait for him; she’d wait all day if necessary.

  So she laced her fingers, considering him without his money and land and title. Being a man didn’t plead his cause with her, either, she realized, whether rich or poor. As a matter of fact, it was his manly demeanor, that maddening assurance most men have, that’s what hurt his case. Was she jealous of all males? Perhaps—jealous because men, as a result of their genetic complexion had everything and women nothing. The road to success was easy for men of his class, impossible for a woman of any class. Was her animosity also fueled because this young man, like most, sensed her weakness and, like a fox about to pounce upon a fowl, took advantage of her inferiority?

  “Too complicated,” she heard her mother’s voice again. “Let wild thoughts fly away, stand ready, and get on with it.” The dead Maddalena chose all the wrong moments to appear and left Serafina with no fresh ideas. She must try for a clean slate so she closed her eyes, opened them, and saw Rosa sending her irritating signals to get on with it, but she waited, still and unmoving, patient for Naldo to take the bait and fill the void with words, a technique which doubtless was time consuming, but in the end resulted in success.

  “Not much to tell you about her.”

  “Her?”

  “My mother. We weren’t close.” He looked up at the portrait and smirked.

  “I was in Glasgow or Genoa for most of her illness. Came home one weekend, and she was ill—‘fighting poor weather,’ was the way my father put it. Next thing I knew, I received a telegram from him saying she’d died.”

  “You couldn’t have gotten home?”

  He shook his head. “In the middle of business.”

  “But she was your mother,” Rosa said.

  Naldo turned to her, as if seeing the madam for the first time, and Serafina glimpsed something old and dark sweep over his features. He slid down the arm of the sofa and edged to the front of the seat, elbows on knees, reminding Serafina of Genoveffa’s bird-like stance during their meeting yesterday. Switching his gaze, he scrutinized Serafina. “Mother never cared for me. I was suckled by a wet nurse, changed by a nanny, sent away to school. Six years old, I remember it, standing right here before the hearth, clothed in the school uniform, receiving no kiss from her, not even a peck on the cheek. She looked down, smiled, dabbed her eyes—I’ll give her that—and extended her hand to me, waiting for me to kiss it, I supposed, but I must have hesitated too long, and when finally I bent to do so, she withdrew it. So, not even a kiss good-bye.”

  “Perhaps she was dying inside at the thought of losing you,” Serafina said.

  His laugh was a sudden bark. “The first and last time she kissed me was on my wedding day, and then only because it was the thing to do. Alabaster lips, I still feel them. Cold and wet and uncaring, barely brushing my cheeks. Other than that, I don’t think she ever touched me.”

  Serafina felt a draft. “And your wife?”

  “She liked my wife’s family well enough. Valued the connection.”

  “Your children?”

  “Never saw them.”

  Rosa looked down at her shoes.

  “Your sister thinks your mother was poisoned.”

  “Does she, now.” He smiled. “What a perfect candidate.”

  “So you think it’s possible?”

  “Of course. Cold-hearted, uncaring, conniving.”

  “Did you arrange for it?”

  Silence in the room.

  “I’m not clever enough to have done so.”

  He had a venomous look. How could a son think such thoughts of his mother? Serafina stared at him, picturing her own sons—Carlo, for instance, when he’d had too much wine, picking her apart, or the hardness in Vicenzu’s eyes after he’d told her she could
n’t spend coins on fabric, or the eyes of her youngest son, Totò, filled with stubborn disappointment. But these were nothing, the vagaries of male personalities not yet fully formed. She pushed her boots deeper into the carpet, trying to warm her toes.

  Naldo continued. “Always picking us apart. Hated our associates, anything that occupied our attention. Thought business was beneath her. Perhaps she thought coins flew down from the sky to pay for all of this.” He waved a hand around the room.

  Serafina swallowed. Judging from Naldo’s last remark, it sounded to her like father and son had discussed the baroness’s dislike of trade. She pulled out her notebook and scratched some words. “I shouldn’t have asked if you’d murdered her. I should have known you lacked the courage to do it.”

  Rosa shot her a look.

  Naldo looked at her with eyes that were old wounds. He shook his head and smiled. “I wouldn’t have done it, a waste of energy. She had enough venom in her soul to poison the lot of us. It was inevitable that one day it would turn inward.” He pulled out his watch. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some pressing business.”

  Without giving her a chance to ask another question, he stood, rocked a bit on his heels, and strode out of the room, glancing one more time at the portrait of his mother.

  In his wake, a heavy silence, except for more scribbling from Serafina’s pencil and the furious shaking of Rosa’s head.

  “What do you think?” Rosa asked.

  “Hurt terribly by something. Love twisted into anger?”

  “Couldn’t call it that,” Rosa said.

  “But could he have killed her?”

  “His own mother? He wasn’t even here!”

  After that interview, Serafina needed fresh air, so she and Rosa walked through the French doors to the terrace and down the path to the gazebo on one edge of the lawn, midway between the house and the harbor. Serafina sat and visored her eyes and looked out at the sea. Her mind drifted.