Murder On The Rue Cassette (A Serafina Florio Mystery) (23 page)

“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 Hôtel 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—”