Death of a Serpent (13 page)

Too many parts of the tapestry needed mending before the real picture could emerge. For he was a wily killer, this one, eluding detection by donning masks, taking on shapes that flipped faster than a tuna’s tail. And yet there must be something, some truth that held the key, a clue that, for now, lay beyond her ken. Who or what caused the change in Rosa’s house? How could she peel away the layers of secrets? She forgot her surroundings, cocked her head to one side and swirled the liquid in her glass.

• • •

The wick in her oil lamp began to sputter. Serafina went in search of the madam.

“What’s this I hear about Falco and the women? And this time, don’t deny it.”

Rosa bit her lip. “Harmless he is.”

“Harmless? He’s a viper and he’s been here in your house. A customer who helps himself according to Gioconda.” As she talked, Serafina wrote so quickly in her book that she nearly tore the page. “We will never find this killer if you keep the truth inside your head.”

Rosa hung her head. “Circle him on the list if you must. Inside the house, Falco, but a charmer. You will see how innocent he is.”

Serafina rubbed her forehead. “Judging from what Scarpo and the women told me, things changed here a few months before the murders began.”

“What things?” Rosa twisted her handkerchief.

“The comings, the goings. The friendships stopped. Confidences dried up. Gemma and Nelli became secretive. There is a pattern that emerges before each death, a pattern so subtle, so, so—”

Rosa slammed the desk. “There you go again with all that talk, like a government official you sound!”

“Faint, that’s the word, so faint that only a person with the gift of divination may discern it. Oh Madonna, help me to see. Now, right now. We must peer into the darkness, unravel the threads. Let’s put our heads together. But before we do—”

“Out with it!”

“Tell me about Eugenia.”

Eyes wide, a backward glance, a bitten lip, and the madam managed one word. “Who?”

“You heard me.”

Rosa swiped her cheeks. “Eugenia. Not important.”

“A woman, a large one, comes to this house and, like a fox in a chicken coop, steals from the others, causes pain and a mistrust that, like the sound of the sea, never goes away. She could be your killer, or a link to him, and all you can say is, ‘Not important?’ If you want to get yourself another wizard, just keep up with your secrecy, your grand fantasy that everything is sweet and loving around here. Because it’s not. There’s an evil stench within these walls, La Signura Rosa, and I need your help.”

For once, Rosa had no words. She patted the blotter on her desk and looked at Serafina as if she, Rosa, were a virginal saint, innocence lit by a thousand votive candles.

After a thick silence, Rosa began. “She knocked on the door, all sparkles, and with muscles like a sinewy mule. Looking at her, at her high cheekbones, her long limbs, those powerful eyes, that head of hair with locks longer than the mane on Garibaldi’s horse, and shimmering, too, in the sun, I could see her at work: one effortless, glorious toss after another, barely coming up for air, five, six, seven times an hour. I could hear the ca-chink of my coffers. So I, unknowing and innocent, beguiled but with the best of intentions, opened the door to her. Came from Palermo she said, and named a fancy house. Time passed. We prospered. One day Gusti came to me, complained of pearls missing, the ones the cardinal gave her. Your Carmela, too, missing a bag, she said, and some slippers. I didn’t want to hear their words. I admit it—I made a mistake.” Rosa wiped her eyes. “But when Lola told me about some missing clothes, a flashy petticoat she used to wear on special occasions, I became suspicious. I sent for Eugenia, and told her to get out. Out! I said. And my word shook the house. The thieving stopped.”

“And you didn’t tell Colonna?”

Rosa rubbed her palms back and forth. “We take care of these things ourselves. I went to
see La Signura Livia Secunda
. You don’t know her. Runs a house in Palermo. Respectable, a little too frilly. And what a snake’s mouth she has, and with a vicious bite too. But she has friends all over.” Rosa winked and made twirls in the air to indicate ‘all over.’ “Secunda made sure
La Colossa
Eugenia never worked again.” As if to wipe yesterday’s stain off her hands, Rosa ran them up and down her boned bodice, picked up her glass and downed her Marsala.

• • •

The beech log crackled. High notes, low notes, all were eaten alive by a clean flame. Serafina felt its heat on her face. Her bones relaxed. She felt how good it was to sit across from Rosa, her oldest, dearest friend on a cold evening by a warm fire. She asked, “Where is she now?”

“Scarpo knows. Remind me to ask him.”

She told Rosa about Arcangelo’s ride to the stables with Gemma on the evening she disappeared, his description of the hooded figure.

“Circle him in that precious book of yours, cross the limping one out. Add Eugenia below Falco if you must, but Arcangelo saw the killer, and the spider crawls up my spine again.” She crossed herself.

“One of the last prostitutes I interviewed, Gusti, the one with the swollen chest? She knows where Carmela is. Wouldn’t tell me.”

“The
strega
!” Rosa started for the door.

“Sit. I don’t blame her. Carmela made her promise not to tell her family. And Gusti is her friend. She cannot break that promise. But it gave me hope. Carmela must be close. Gusti said she was happy.”

“I’ll get it out of her. Have my ways, don’t I?”

“Don’t. Not yet. We’ll give the guards another week,” Serafina said. “Gusti also mentioned seeing Bella at the train station. Said she had a female visitor.”

“A what? Oh, a real visitor, you mean. The contessa. Francesca Grinaldi. We see her in Palermo tomorrow. I’ll dispatch one of the guards with a note.”

“Gusti described her as ‘all bends and bumps and angles.’ Called her ‘an old woman.’”

Rosa smiled. “To my girls, anyone over thirty is old.”

“Don’t forget, the early train. Leaves at seven, more or less. I’ll meet you at the station, fifteen before the hour.”

“Barbaric, but as you wish.”

A knock and the door opened. A maid said, “The baron.”

“Time to go.” Turning to the domestic, Rosa said, “Get Turi and Scarpo.” And to Serafina, “They can take you home in the carriage.”

“I came with Beppe in the trap. The fresh air will clear my head.”

“Then fetch Arcangelo,” Rosa said to the maid.

The domestic nodded, closed the door.

“After dark, you need two. Arcangelo can ride behind, keep his eyes on you, return at first light.”

They kissed each other on both cheeks.

“Oh, and I almost forgot.” Serafina turned back.

“You are impossible, standing there, tapping your chin like a potentate! Always late, always three times as much time as I take, you take. Always make three times as many words as you need. They cling to you, your words, like maggots on the dead.”

“Ask Scarpo to go to the blacksmith’s tomorrow. Tell him Donna Fina wants to know if anyone rented a stall between mid-July and August 6th. I want names and dates. All the names, all the dates. And swear the smith to secrecy: he is to tell no one.”

Rosa nodded.

Serafina told her what Formusa said about Nelli’s coins.

“The most important detail of all, and you almost forget to tell me.”

“Because if I told you about coins in the beginning, you wouldn’t hear anything else.”

Rosa said, “Mark my words, think on it well: money is at the root of these crimes. I know it, I know it.” She twisted her fingers. “The killer promises them something for a big fee. He takes their coins and kills them. At the heart is lucre.”

“That may be a part of it. Falco, for instance, gains by Bella’s death.”

“Will you leave him alone? Like a cur chewing on a bone, you are.”

“But that’s not all, not the most important part. There’s a systematic ghoulishness about these murders, a wildness about the killer that lust for money will never explain. He has the cunning of the wild, intent on one thing only—eliminating you and all your prostitutes and the business you think I know so little about.”

“My head, it spins.”

“Why the mark branded on their foreheads? Why did each death occur between the sixth and the seventh of the month? We must discover how the victims’ lives touched his. Why did these women need him? Agree to meet him? What did the three women have in common, other than their profession and their address? Is the killer someone who helped himself to all three?”

“Never!”

“Rosa, listen to yourself. Falco is a customer. On the list.”

The madam stood at the door staring at something inside. “All right. But I can’t quite believe it of him. A charmer, Falco.”

“Then tell me this: who is the one woman most likely to be the next victim?”

The Ride Home

O
n their way home, mist obscured the moon, but Serafina saw thousands of stars, maybe millions. Brilliant tonight, the world. Letting her body follow the sway and swing of the trap, she peered into the ether, high up into that mighty interstellar darkness, not opaque but not quite transparent; where space went beyond itself to somewhere lighter, bluer, farther up than she or it or any star had ever traveled; where past and future were finished, and truth existed, pure, whole, untouched. What would Rosa say if she could hear these thoughts? Serafina saw the face her friend would make. She smiled, and giving herself over to the ride, bumped on, bending with the curve in the road.

She felt an excitement somewhere, a tingling in her toes, in the vigorous beating of her heart. Life had changed. She was brand new. Or perhaps it was her quest to find the killer of Rosa’s women, a calling she was always meant to follow. No matter the reason, she began viewing her surroundings for the first time. “Look at the glittering heavens, Beppe. The big star, see it?”

His brows furrowed. His cheeks moved in and out as he poked a dirty finger at the sky. “That one?”

“
La Puddara
, a good friend. It never moves. Walk toward the star, you’ll pass through the rough neighborhoods and come upon the sea. Walk away from it, you’ll come back to the
Centru
. Keep going, you bump into the Madonie or a wheat field, one of those, it depends. Shepherds and fishermen know how to work
La Puddara
better than I. Talk to them, they’ll teach you all the ins and outs. Or maybe Giulia has a book about the polar star. Ask her.” As she spoke, the wind took her breath, the night air stung her nose. She thought of her children’s laughter, the way her sweet Giorgio used to warm their bed.

“Tomorrow night, too?”

“Yes, and the night after that, and after that, in a string of nights as far and wide as the mind can imagine. The power of
La Puddara
is forever. When it chooses to appear, that is. Learn how to use this star and it’ll keep you on the right path. Admit it, you’re lost half the time in this part of town.”

He lifted one corner of his mouth.

Beppe, what would she do without him? Two years ago, she received a letter from the head of the orphanage. ‘Finished with schooling, Beppe, too old to stay here,’ the nun had written, ‘but no one wants him.’ So he came to live with the Florio family. They fed and clothed him, gave him a room of his own and a stipend. In exchange, he ran errands for the house, accompanied Serafina to and from her midwife’s work. To most, he seemed a simpleton, but she knew better. Oh, his brain was a little sluggish, but his fists were not, a fact which endeared him to her children. That, and his size—he towered over most men, including her own boys, and, more to the point, over the town’s troublemakers, of which there seemed to be more and more. The lot of them, cowards all, looked away when Beppe passed. “An estimated 25,000 deserters,” her son, Carlo, told her. Many of them gathered in the piazza each day, and by night, lurked in the shadows of unlit streets.

Beppe quickened Largo’s pace. Serafina shivered despite wearing her thick winter cape. They passed the market stalls shuddering in the wind, the stables, the blacksmith, the houses of the artisans, dark and small, standing like battered sentinels on the edge of town. Serafina heard bawdy laughter coming from somewhere, the angry voices of a man and woman arguing, the howling of a mad dog. She turned her head around and saw Arcangelo on his mule riding a few paces behind. A black cat skirted in front of Largo’s hooves and shone her yellow eyes at Serafina, the feline’s belly close to the ground, a rodent’s tail and claws wriggling between clamped teeth. Serafina smelled wet laundry, cheap wine, human waste.

Closer to town, they passed the former abbey flying the tricolor. Ever since the government muscled it away from the monks, soldiers marched back and forth in front, lean and tall, handsome in their uniforms, tight in all the right places, and she’d looked. Her cheeks warmed at the thought. She could live with that change and, she admitted, was grateful for the show of strength, glad when the Bourbon rulers slinked off her land. Good riddance: ugly, self-righteous pigs, every last one.

Except for the queen. Stately, beautiful, stubborn, Maria Sofie held out in Gaeta surrounded by all of Savoy’s troops, soldiers and cannon stacked against her as high as the peaks of Monte Pellegrino. Yet she refused to surrender, stood her ground while the king, her husband, cowered in the closet. Defeated, the queen, still my queen, she’d said one day to Giorgio who replied, “While she ruled, Maria Sophie cared not a jot for Sicilians.” But Serafina had no plans to remove her picture from its place of honor in the parlor.

Beppe snapped the reins. Again and again he touched his back, twirled his head left and right, looked up at the heavens searching for the star. His Phrygian cap crimped the tops of his ears. He turned onto a side street, their usual shortcut.

Not far from home, then, but Serafina couldn’t see a light anywhere, except for their lantern, and a small beacon behind them, Arcangelo’s torch. It was dark ahead, and Beppe paid too much attention to that star. And she, wishing she hadn’t mentioned
La Puddara
, not at all, thought that Largo was going too fast, probably sensing the end of the journey, when one of their wheels rolled over a large stone.