Death In Bagheria (A Serafina Florio Mystery)

by Susan Russo Anderson

  After they left, there was the usual rush of emotion between Serafina and Carmela. Serafina tossed a few remarks Carmela’s way about the poor job she did feigning politeness with Loffredo while Renata walked back and forth from the table to the stove preparing something or other, at one point bringing a plate of cookies to the table and pouring coffee for the three of them.

  “I wish Giulia were here.”

  “She comes home tonight, but just for tomorrow, and it’s Maria’s weekend with Aunt Giuseppina, remember? But they try to come home tonight,” Carmela said, biting into a cookie.

  Despite the breakfast she’d just finished, Serafina felt famished. She grabbed a handful of olives and cookies and stuffed them into her mouth, disregarding her daughters, who stared at her. When Renata was out of earshot, Serafina told Carmela about Renata’s dreadful tryst with della Trabia, “a dangerous character and one of my primary suspects.” She sketched Renata’s rescue at Solunto.

  Carmela shook her head, staring at nothing and chewing on a cookie. “Doesn’t do well with men. Doesn’t even understand what’s going on between you and Loffredo.”

  “And I want you to help her in that department.”

  “You mean tell her that her mother’s having an affair?”

  “You’d do well to curb your tongue. Loffredo and I have been chums since school.”

  “While Papa was alive?”

  “Chums, I said. It wasn’t always this way.”

  “What way is that?”

  “You know what I mean. And anyway, never when your father was alive. I was always faithful to Giorgio, always. But Renata needs to start being aware and walking out.”

  They were silent for a while until the grandfather clock began chiming.

  “Why is it always me?” Carmela asked.

  “Because you’re much better at handling men than I am, and because Renata would be far more comfortable talking with you than with me, especially after last night.”

  For once, Carmela had to agree.

  Serafina could feel it, the house beginning to settle, the sounds of Renata moving with such joy in her kitchen. There were words still to be spoken between her and Carmela—there always would be words with that one—but Serafina was making some progress introducing Loffredo into the family. Thank the Madonna that Maria wasn’t home—nose so high in the air, Maria had time for her musical scores and her frightful Brahms, nothing else. Serafina’s head whirled with all that she had to do before she could visit with Betta and meet Genoveffa, but she thought she might go upstairs and take a short rest.

  Carmela got up and left the room, returning with an envelope for Serafina. It was addressed to her in a hand she did not recognize. “Delivered yesterday, shortly after you departed,” she said.

  Glancing at the stamp, Serafina murmured, “From Paris.” Elena? She shuddered, wedged it into her pocket, thinking she’d read it tonight after supper, or perhaps tomorrow night after the festivities. Or maybe next week.

  In Her Mother’s Room

  Traipsing up the stairs to her mother’s room on the third floor with Umbrello’s parcel containing whatever it was he’d found in Doucette’s trunk, Serafina felt in her pockets for the baroness’s journal she’d discovered underneath the housekeeper’s bed. She opened the door, reached into the desk for what was left of the one Genoveffa had given her on Wednesday. Plunking herself into her mother’s favorite chair and untying the twine, she opened the paper and stared at the two additional volumes in her hand. At the same time, she opened her notebook to the entry she’d scribbled describing the baroness’s reaction to “Naldo’s agony.” She had four journals to read, three found in Doucette’s possession and the one Genoveffa had given to her.

  Thumbing through all four books, she noticed that the baroness filled each volume in a little less than three months. That was consistent with the total number of journals they’d found, since the baroness had lived at Villa Caterina for eleven years, from 1857 to September 1868 when she died. All books were bound the same and appeared to have the same number of pages. Each one began with the month and year. Seldom did the baroness write the exact date, and many entries had no date, but because the baroness wrote from front to back, Serafina could easily approximate the date of each entry.

  Having decided she’d read chronologically, Serafina ordered the four notebooks according to date, the oldest first—as it turned out, the one beginning with January 1866, the one she’d found underneath Doucette’s bed containing a reference to the shadowy figure, the one Doucette called a priest. The next one, dated April 1867, was one of the two that Umbrello found in the housekeeper’s trunk. It preceded the journal Genoveffa had given her, which had an August 1867 date. And the fourth and last, also found in Doucette’s trunk, dated July 1868, two months before the baroness died, was only half full.

  She began reading the January 1866 journal, and her eyes grew heavy until she came to the passage beginning, “Doucette told me it was my imagination—who would want to poison me … .” It was written close to the beginning of the book. Each time she read it, Serafina was distressed, feeling the hopelessness of the baroness’s situation, not a woman easily duped. But if the victim did see someone in her room, someone who should not have been there—obviously the woman’s poisoner—she, Serafina, wondered how Doucette, with her obvious loyalty to the baroness, could have lived with herself. Could she have played a part so convincingly that she fooled herself?

  Again he came to me with the host, this man in black. I will not call him priest. What priest has eyes so wild as his? What priest dips the host in the sacred blood? I find it hard to look at him, his back to the light which by my orders streams into my bedroom. I mean not to be hoodwinked so easily by a French maid.

  In another entry, Serafina read,

  And my poor husband cannot decide to do as the doctor counsels. I close my eyes and pray to the Virgin, my anchor, she who would never deceive me, who in the past helped me to cope with a son I will never understand, Mother of mine, save me, who is this who comes with the host, I have seen him, I know I have before this and not in a priest’s garb. Never far away, Doucette comes running, ‘But it is your husband with the doctor, my dearest lady, please do not be so distressed. It was your husband bade the priest bring you the host. And perhaps you’ve had another of your foul dreams. It is your sickness, nothing more’ And for a moment once again, she deceives me. Sweet Jesus, save me from this deception. I must have Genoveffa by my side.

  So it was the baroness, not the baron, who called for Genoveffa. Serafina felt a sickness in her soul. Her temples throbbed as she read the rest of the baroness’s journal, knowing the woman’s fate, in awe of the strength of her mind, sick and drugged though she was.

  Skimming through the rest of the entries, Serafina realized that when Lady Caterina wrote them, she must have been in the throes of her debilitating illness and must have derived momentary comfort by stringing words one after the other without much factual significance. Indeed, some of her comments were almost gibberish or a poetry of the sort Serafina did not understand. For masking her killer, what kind of money must Doucette have commanded?

  She picked up the second journal, the first of two hidden in Doucette’s trunk, dated April 1867, a time when Lady Notobene’s illness had somewhat subsided and the family had hopes that she was on the mend. She wrote of an Easter surrounded by her loved ones, her husband, daughter. With the help of the housekeeper and Mima, they planned the meal, but shortly after the feast, her bouts of severe stomach distress began again. Within five months, she would be dead. Entries were short and full of fact rather than rumination with the exception of one.

  They have played me for a fool. While Doucette cajoles, the priest who is no priest visits me daily. I will not have him in my room. I called for Genoveffa again.

  Who had played her for a fool?
The baroness had used the plural form. And why would Doucette have kept the journals with such damning evidence? Of course, she was planning on continuing with her blackmail—oh, despicable woman!

  Abandoning her resolve to read the journals chronologically, Serafina picked up the first journal again and stared at the words that had given her such a start when she first read them aloud to Loffredo, Rosa, and Umbrello while searching Doucette’s room:

  … a figure, dark, a shadowy form, stood at the foot of my bed, peering at the tray. I turned away, the vision too disturbing, and when next I opened my eyes, he was gone.

  She flipped pages, skimming over most of the entries, a coldness blanketing her heart, but reading one more that caught her eye.

  Geraldo and I had words, the first in a long time, and it wearies my soul. I am dying and do not want to depart with such a disagreement between us, but I sense a danger. ‘Your daughter needs you, I need you, and yet your attention is only with your ships.’ He protested, denied, asked me how I thought he could afford all this luxury. This morning, I overheard a conversation between the footman and Doucette, this morning as I lay half asleep. ‘Not the citrus, the other, that will double the coffers.’ Something dark and sinister has happened with Geraldo’s business, and I cannot put my finger on it. Is it the strange cargo being boarded? I see it from my window, the wharf swarming with men, Geraldo’s carriage, and then, so silent.

  And Serafina, her heart feeling the pain of this helpless woman, merged the moment into a time beyond clocks, her mind lost to the present. She began to wonder again how the conspiracy and the smuggling could take place without the baron’s knowledge. Had he fooled Serafina completely?

  Come to that, how would this shadowy form, if indeed he did exist—this ‘priest who was no priest’—come and go without the butler’s knowledge? It seemed that whoever wanted access to the baroness had it with the ease of a pope: Lady Caterina’s sick room was like the waiting room at Oltramari’s train station. What if she and Rosa were wrong about Umbrello and he and Doucette were in league? The thought stopped her, and she was overwhelmed with the mystery of who killed the baroness and how quickly she had relied on her intuition and on Rosa’s obvious delight with Umbrello.

  Without thinking, Serafina ranged about the room, took out a linen, and wiped her forehead. Was Rosa in danger? Her family, too?

  She reached for her watch pin, remembering as she did so that the mechanism had been broken during the attack on the roof, when the vivid image of her assailant struck her mind with the force of a cracking blow. Short, dressed in black, wearing a bandana … Absentmindedly, she fingered the journal given her by Genoveffa, holding it as she had on the first day she’d seen him before the notebook was ripped from her grasp. “In the piazza, stuffing orange blossoms into St. Benedict’s hands,” she said aloud.

  With care, she put all four journals into her mother’s desk drawer and locked it, then peered into her reticule to make sure her notebook was inside. She had to warn Genoveffa, but it was not yet noon, and the nun, a stickler for the correct hour, had specified an afternoon meeting, so she’d have time now to check on Betta.

  Betta and the Don

  On the way to Betta’s room, she glanced at the closed door to the don’s study and ran up the stairs.

  The lady’s maid answered her knock.

  “How is she?”

  “Difficult,” Agata whispered. “She needs reassurance.”

  Entering the room, Serafina smiled, and the two women kissed on both cheeks. “I brought you these flowers,” Serafina said, opening her satchel and handing her a bunch of cut lilies. “They’re from Carmela. How do you feel?”

  “So lovely, but I must get up from this bed, just to sit for a moment in the sun. This will drive me mad, and I’m fine, really. I long for the garden, so pleasant.”

  After she examined Betta, Serafina shook her head, saw Agata breathe in and shake her head. Putting her stethoscope away, Serafina said, “The baby’s heartbeat is strong, and you’re making progress, but you must stay in bed. You don’t want to lose this child. You must stay in bed—just a few more weeks, now—but so important. And what a feat you’ll accomplish. I know I couldn’t manage it. Terribly difficult, it’s one of the most difficult jobs a mother has to do.”

  Betta hung her head, and the tears rolled down her cheeks. “Have you known any other woman who’s remained motionless for this long?”

  Agata handed her a fresh linen.

  Betta sat up, a little hunched over like a rag doll. Moving her legs, she slammed a fist into a pillow. “It’s … torture, torture! Agony!”

  Serafina hugged the poor woman’s shoulders and sat next to her on the bed. “You’ll be the first—a great feat if you succeed. Promise me you will.” Serafina felt like an ogre. If she acquiesced and allowed Betta to sit in the garden, would she want to walk around? No, she couldn’t allow it; there was no other way to save her.

  Kissing Betta, handing Agata another bottle of her mother’s secret recipe to soothe expectant mothers, and telling her friend she’d be round to catch up on the news tomorrow after Totò’s Mass, she heard the door open, saw a shadow cross the bed, and knew the moment had come.

  “In my office,” Don Tigro said.

  Part of her had hoped he’d be home and she could have a word with him, but a greater part feared the confrontation they were about to have. Yet she realized, as she followed him down the stairs, that she had little choice. She felt her stomach churn, and a cold started from somewhere near the pit of her stomach spreading rapidly to her limbs and her toes. Entering his office, she remembered her dying mother’s secret.

  He dismissed two shadowy figures from the corner of his study and motioned for her to sit. She declined. Instead, she stood before his desk and looked down at him.

  She swallowed and began. “I hadn’t realized you were so welcome in aristocratic circles, but then, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, considering the baron’s lack of judgment.”

  “You sharpen your tongue at my expense. Someday it will be the death of you.” He paused. “Why were you were at Villa Caterina?”

  He wanted information, that was it, but why? His men crawled on the baron’s wharf like an army of scorpions. “You know why I was there—you overheard my conversation with the baron.”

  “And did you find what you were looking for?”

  “I don’t need to answer that. The estate crawls with your men, some of them running to be the first to tell you.”

  He shook his head, waiting a moment before speaking. “What happens on the pier, that’s what interests my men. That’s why they’re paid, to secure the baron’s ships.” He flashed his brilliant teeth.

  “I thought the baron’s gabelloto did that.”

  He shook his head.

  “And are your men waiting in the new world for the ship to arrive? In the past, you’ve expressed an interest in obtaining a foothold there.”

  “Too early for that.” He felt the pin in his cravat; otherwise, his body was motionless.

  “Then perhaps you’ll explain why we found opium in the hold of one of the baron’s ships. It was filled with it.”

  He blinked. It was such a fleeting movement, Serafina had to strain to see it, and she waited for another revelation, not taking her eyes from his face. She had to admire his veneer, the impeccable tailoring of the morning suit he wore. If anything, it showed his intelligence, while masking his brutality.

  The moment expanded, and the silence filled the room. Presently, his hands, which had been folded on the desk, unlaced themselves, and ever so slightly, he rubbed the forefinger and thumb of his right hand together, working them back and forth. A characteristic gesture she’d seen him use many times before, but what did it signify—surprise, fear, impatience? Was it possible he hadn’t known about the smuggling?
How could he not have discovered it, unless he had been duped by someone he trusted—the baron? Or was he like a controlled chess player studying his options and their consequences? She remembered the look on his face at dinner Thursday evening when she asked about the crates sitting on the wharf—the furious movement of his eyes canting right and left, signifying anger and something else: surprise. She had doubted his involvement beyond protection, doubted it then, doubted it now.

  Serafina waited a moment longer, then said, “The baron claims no knowledge of the contraband. I’ve just learned that the baroness knew about it and threatened exposure, but whoever is involved in the smuggling—and it has to be more than one—they are complicit in her murder, and I promise you, I will not rest until I discover who they are.”

  A Warning

  Clutching her satchel and reticule, she ran across the piazza, up the narrow staircase, and into the sacristy in less than a minute. Panting, she stopped for air before opening the door. She waited until her eyes adjusted to the dim light when a figure, darker than her surroundings, slowly took shape, the outline of a nun with hiked-up skirts—Genoveffa.

  “We said today, yes, but Wednesday would suit me better, I still have so much to do.” She began moving toward the door.

  Serafina touched the nun’s sleeve. “But I cut my visit short in part to be here as we planned.” Serafina frowned and waited before continuing. “Wednesday then, but right now your life is in grave danger.”

  “Absurd.”

  “I’ll prove it to you.”

  Genoveffa turned toward Serafina. “In my office, but you’ll have to talk fast. I have only a moment.”