Death In Bagheria (A Serafina Florio Mystery)

by Susan Russo Anderson

  He removed his wig and looked at it, as if it were an object of scorn. Pressing it to his cheek, he said, “My wife is such an innocent. You won’t believe this, but she is the most precious thing I have, she and my children. If she were ever to hear—”

  “Not from me, whether you tell me what I need to know or not.” There, she’d said it, damning her chance to learn more about the contraband and the motive for the baroness’s death.

  “Can’t tell you.” He stood abruptly, turned as if to walk away.

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Cannot now. Perhaps later.”

  It was as close to an admission as she’d get from him. “When?”

  But he did not reply. When she looked up, he had vanished, as if he were a phantom that she dreamed.

  Serafina felt empty and cheap, felt her mother’s scorn. Worse, she had become her mother, lashing out at her own soul. How different was she from Naldo?

  After the Mass

  Friday, March 25, 1870

  Serafina was dejected—she admitted it—considering what little she’d accomplished. Earlier, she and Rosa made their way down to the kitchen, grabbed Renata, and sailed into the chapel where Serafina felt the strong presence of the baroness. Seating themselves in the last pew, they waited while the others filed in and took places befitting their class—nobility in the front, servants in the rear, stiff and scrubbed in their best clothes. She’d nodded to the gardener, who smiled at Rosa when he saw her, following his son and wife, Mima, their faces solemn.

  Serafina gazed at Domenico as he passed, short but with enormous shoulders, his hands folded, one of his mother’s adoring arms wrapped around the crook of his elbow, his black hair hiding the collar of his coat. She watched as he knelt on the cold marble floor, head bowed in prayer, remaining suppliant long after the rest of the congregation had taken their seats. Della Trabia, almost unrecognizable in frock coat and top hat, sat in the front with the invited guests. She heard the hum of the organ, its soft tones working up to a majestic peal, then an abrupt silence followed by the choir chanting the Ave Maris Stella while the bishop and his priests processed down the aisle. Serafina took one last look at the congregation, spotting Umbrello and Lina as well as the rest of the indoor servants. Regretting that she’d miss the pomp, she slipped out the side door with Rosa and Renata.

  Although they’d searched the baron’s study and the son’s office, riffling through the desks, all of the books on the shelves, they did not uncover any document that would incriminate the baron or his son, either in the murder of the baroness or in having knowledge of the contraband carried by their ships.

  After wiping her face with a linen, Serafina consulted her watch. “Time enough to examine the baron’s bedroom.” She followed her daughter and Rosa up the main staircase to the third floor and into the baroness’s bedroom. After trying a few doors, they found the one leading to a small hallway and into his chamber, decorated as Serafina suspected it would be in chestnut paneling, the floors covered in dark carpeting, the air stale, the whole, decidedly too male and too unremarkable for her taste. They found nothing out of place, nothing implicating him in the murder of his wife, although they searched the small desk, looked in and under the bed, through his closet, poked into his suit pockets, the dressers, even lifted a loose stone in front of the hearth where they discovered nothing except for a locked strongbox filled with coins by the sound of it, but too heavy for them to hoist.

  Back on the main floor, they combed all the likely spots, but did not find any more of the baroness’s journals, except for an older volume squirreled beneath the cushions of the love seat in the ladies’ parlor. Because of its age, Serafina doubted it would contain anything of interest, but vowing to read it at her first opportunity, she crammed it deep into her pocket and caught up with Rosa and Renata, who had begun sorting through the shelves in the kitchen.

  After a thorough hunt, the three discovered nothing of interest, but as small comfort, Serafina told herself that she’d grown more respectful of the cook, admiring her for running a smooth kitchen if creating an uninspired cuisine, since their task had been made easier by such well-ordered cabinets. Despite Rosa’s belief that the killer had removed all evidence long ago, and that therefore their search of Villa Caterina was a total waste of energy, they scoured the kitchen areas again to make sure they hadn’t overlooked anything, this time emptying every shelf, examining the contents before replacing each item to its rightful space. Nothing.

  Armed with the key from the cook, she and Rosa went to the larder and unlocked the drawers of the gamekeeper’s desk, only to find all of them empty.

  Umbrello

  They were seated in the servants’ parlor with the door closed, an airless room with small windows near the ceiling. In keeping with her custom, Serafina looked in the corners but found no dust, and Rosa spent her few moments waiting for the butler to arrive by picking at her sleeve and pursing her lips. Serafina couldn’t help cautioning her to let him do most of the talking. Rosa looked away and fanned herself.

  Presently there was a knock, and the door opened.

  “We’ve had such a delightful stay here,” Serafina began after the butler was seated, “all our comforts seen to before we thought to ask for them. Yesterday evening, for instance, there were flowers in my room, and the bedclothes were turned down. It’s those small touches that reveal a well-run house and make our life comfortable, and the praise is due to you.”

  Umbrello caught a stray curl which had fallen into his face and flattened it against his head. He was dressed in a morning suit, his shirt gleaming, his striped pants freshly pressed, possibly in honor of the feast. He smiled, straightening his cuffs, and waited.

  Serafina noticed that his hands were rough yet manicured, and she caught the faint odor of soap. She remembered Naldo’s perfumed scent and painted nails last night and feeling a pang of remorse for discovering his secret, she imagined the agony that must be a daily ordeal for him. She hadn’t told the madam yet about him. Didn’t see the need, unless she found it had some bearing on the case. For her part, Rosa sat still, taking in all of the butler.

  After he returned Rosa’s smile, looking from her to Serafina, he nodded, as if to himself, took some time inspecting his shoes, and began. “The housekeeper, too, of course. She’s due the praise for the details—like the flowers in the guest rooms and the smooth way the house has of settling and giving whatever it needs to. A taskmaster she is for the most part, although we’ve had some trouble lately. Difficult running a house like this, especially after the death of the baroness.”

  Serafina liked his sensitivity, his honesty, his praise of others. She trusted him and she sensed that Rosa, who was listening to him intently, felt the same. “What will you do when Doucette leaves—tomorrow, isn’t it?”

  He caught his lip before speaking. “The Prizzi housekeeper arrives Sunday. She’ll do us proud, I’m sure, until we can find a replacement, and that, I’m afraid, will take a long time. The position of housekeeper is a very important one. She sets the tone of the place, especially in the absence of a mistress, and make no doubt, we suffer since the baroness died. It is a house that has lost its heart.”

  Serafina thought of Lina’s reluctance to apply for the post. “Wouldn’t some of the staff here like to be considered for the job?”

  He patted down his hair again, and his face flooded with color. Casting his eyes about the room, he said, “Hard to say, dear lady.” He straightened his back. “But they were devoted to the baroness, you see, and the baron can be … difficult at times, and he’s more … remote, you might say, so it’s hard for the help, especially the younger ones, to form an attachment to his lordship.”

  “We saw him flap his wings yesterday, remember?” Rosa asked.

  He gave Rosa a down-from-under look and nodded.

  “A sticky wicket for y
ou, but handled so well,” Serafina said.

  He smiled and straightened his vest. “Most of the staff are youngsters, you see, and wouldn’t take that nonsense from him. We’ve had a time keeping the full complement. Not easy finding the good ones, I’ll tell you. Footmen, especially. You’ll remember that we had one leave yesterday.”

  “The one who helped me in the gazebo?” Rosa said.

  He turned to her and lifted his chin. “I didn’t know. What time was that, might I ask, dear lady?”

  Rosa slid her eyes up and to the side. “Mid to late afternoon, well before tea …” She glanced at Serafina. “Which we missed.”

  Umbrello nodded thoughtfully. “I see. That explains it, then.”

  “Explains what?” Serafina asked.

  “He had duties in the afternoon, and he forgot them, I’m afraid, although I’m glad he was of some assistance to you. Don’t take my words the wrong way, please. Had he at least said something, we could have covered for him, but he was missing for quite a while, quite a while indeed, and we didn’t know where he was. Not the first time that he’s gone missing all at once like that, and the baron was upset with me again. We’re generous here. If a servant needs time off, we are more than willing, more than willing to give them what he needs, especially if it’s for the family and all. Generous, not like some of the houses up and down the road. But to disappear without telling us, well, we can’t have the baron being in such a … heated concern, you understand. And this same servant was the one who had failed to tend the hearths in the study. You remember the baron’s ire on that score, surely? No question about it, no question at all, we had to let Reggio go, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, dear!” Rosa said. “Because of me.” She flushed. Her hand went to her ample front, and the butler’s eyes followed it, lingering there, Serafina observed, for a moment longer than was necessary.

  “We understand,” Serafina said. “It’s just that someone stole the journals from my room yesterday and whoever did used the back stairs. I know because we found one of the journals on the third-floor landing. Since few of the servants would know about our discovery, we thought it might have been the footman who helped Rosa find them in the gazebo.”

  “Quite. Been thieving on another occasion, too.” He rubbed his knees. “So you may ease your concerns, the culprit’s gone.”

  “Not so simple,” Serafina said, “because we’re just assuming it was he, we don’t know for sure—”

  “Although it’s likely,” Rosa said.

  “But another journal was lifted from my desk sometime last night after seven o’clock when I began to ready myself for the evening’s entertainment. I discovered it missing when I returned to my room after dinner and wished to read it, so there must be another thief because by then Reggio had been dismissed.”

  The butler paled and was silent a moment. “You should have told me straightaway.” He reached into his coat and brought out a small black notebook and pencil. Wetting the tip, he wrote something and snapped it shut in such a way that Serafina almost believed he’d seen to it already.

  “I discovered it long after dinner in the early morning hours today, and I didn’t want to bother you then, what with the bishop and the Mass and all you had to do early this morning. But can you tell me, who would have keys to the guest rooms?”

  He gritted his teeth and looked down. “A sore subject, I’m afraid. Never had this trouble before the baroness became ill. She was adamant about the locking up and accounting for all the keys. The housekeeper reported to her each night after the lockup with the count of the silver, which she kept in a book in her chatelaine purse. I kept the wine cellar secure and gave the baron the count of the bottles at the end of dinner, although I got the feeling he wasn’t much interested. I had a set of keys, and so did the housekeeper, for all the rooms in the house except for the baron’s study. If a servant needed to open a room, they’d get the key from me or the housekeeper. Now?” He shook his head. “Now, they float around, as plentiful as winged creatures, and who’s to say what stranger might have opened your door? I caught a valet the other day opening one of the guest rooms, and when I asked him what business he had, he said, so casual, that the footman gave him a key because he didn’t have one and the housekeeper had asked him to air the rooms since both footmen were busy and couldn’t manage the task. It’s a mess, I’ll tell you, a real mess, and the baron cares only for his business affairs. Hard to get him to focus on the house. The housekeeper and I get along, don’t mistake me, but she doesn’t seem to grasp the importance of managing the keys.”

  “Couldn’t you have the locks changed?” Rosa asked.

  “Not so simple, dear lady, I wish it were.”

  “I’ll put it to the baron that his house is not secure,” Serafina said.

  The butler shrugged. “You’d think when there was all that trouble with the baroness—sick one day, perfectly fine the next, sick again a week later—that he’d become more involved in the day to day, that he’d become concerned with securing the rooms, but—”

  “Umbrello, are you saying that you agree with Sister Genoveffa that her mother was poisoned?” Serafina asked.

  He hung his head, and there was silence for a long moment before he answered her question. When he did, he chose his words carefully. “I’m saying that if the house had been secure, it would have given less people access to her room. And those of us who’d been around her for any length of time, who felt helpless while she languished day after day in the bed of her torture, losing herself to a … whatever it was that took her life … we all felt the same.”

  A heavy quiet seeped into the room while Serafina digested his words. “Perhaps you can help me with something. We haven’t yet retrieved the other journals, but yesterday I found a book cover probably from a stolen journal. It was in with the debris from yesterday’s pruning in a sack behind the gardener’s shed.”

  He raised both eyebrows.

  “But I was wondering if the thief might have burned the others. Can you tell me where the refuse is heaped?”

  Shaking his head in disbelief, he made another notation. “Let me handle that for you.”

  “I’d just like to know what happened to the journals, and since there’s a possibility that they may have been discarded with the … garbage, I’d like to search there. I ’m so terribly sorry to be giving you more work, especially when you’re short-handed. Perhaps I should be asking the gabelloto.”

  Crimson washed from his neck up to his cheeks. “You’ll get no help from that quarter, I fear, unless della Trabia thinks there’s coins in it for him. Comes around only when he sniffs out money, that one. And if you ask me, most of the trouble in the house started with his arrival. The cook and gardener don’t like him. Trouble in the house, that’s what he’s caused. Deep trouble with the gardener’s son as well, who dotes on the man.”

  Serafina made a mental note of the butler’s dislike of della Trabia. Jealousy? Imaging Colonna’s greasy face, she told herself that she ought to know about the insidious nature of jealousy, but she cornered her lower lip, nodded, and said, “Yes, in the middle of our tour around the grounds, he disappeared. No words of goodbye, he just vanished.”

  “Yes, I know. He made his excuses to me.”

  “If you find the burnt remnants of the books,” she added, “please take a close look at them. Tell me if you find pages only or if there are pieces of the leather covers as well.”

  “What difference does it make? Burnt is burnt,” Rosa said.

  “If there are leather covers, then we are sure that the books were stolen, not for the value of their binding, but for the words they contained. I must convince the baron that the theft was not for the coins the leather would bring, as some would have him believe.”

  Rosa looked at the butler. “Makes sense.”

  He closed
his little black book and smiled at Rosa.

  “One question about della Trabia. Was he here when the accident occurred?”

  The butler straightened and was silent for a while, his eyes clouded over.

  Finally he spoke, “He’d been the baron’s gabelloto for one or two years before the accident, I believe.”

  Rosa furrowed her brows.

  “Who told you about that unfortunate incident, might I ask? If it was a servant, I should know; they shouldn’t be telling tales.”

  “Sister Genoveffa mentioned it when I spoke with her earlier in the week, but when pressed, would not tell me the details. It seemed painful to her, as if it had closed a chapter in her life, and with it, the possibility of happiness. And I’d heard a few stories, rumors really, about Villa Caterina—no one here has mentioned it to me.” It was lie, she knew, but Serafina refused to name Lina as the source of her information, and shot Rosa a cautionary look when the madam opened her mouth to speak. “Do you remember it?” she asked the butler.

  “Of course, a sad day for the house.” Umbrello clamped his lips and looked at his shoes.

  “Am I the only one who doesn’t know about it?” Rosa asked, glancing at Serafina as if to show her how well she was playing her part.

  “It has nothing to do with the death of the baroness, I assure you,” the butler said.

  “Right now, everything remotely related to this house has to do with the death of the baroness—that is, anything that happened to anyone in this house while she was alive, and might still be echoing in the lives of its occupants. We are early in an investigation made almost impossible because her death happened so long ago, and I haven’t yet discovered who killed her, only that Genoveffa is correct—her mother must have been given a toxic substance. I say it was given to her by at least one person, probably more, acting in concert and under the direction of someone else. And I think I’m beginning to understand, certainly to feel, the forces in this house that Lady Caterina abhorred. I believe they are far more complicated and insidious than simple gain from trade, but they are the motive for her murder.” She paused for a breath before continuing. “So any history at this point would be most helpful.”