Death of a Serpent (4 page)

Serafina grabbed a few of the magazines and flipped through them, pausing at some of the colored plates.

She looked at her watch and felt pinched. How did she get herself into this? She wanted to continue helping Rosa, she must, but she must be home when her children returned from school for the noon meal and siesta.

Dust flew up her nose. She sneezed, stopped at a page with a creased corner, and peered through watery eyes at an article with drawings of Italian beadwork, embroidery, and church vestments. In a prostitute’s bedroom, of all places. What were those swirling things carved in wood, etched onto a chalice, or embroidered onto vestments? One snake-like creature wound itself around a holy book of some sort. Another drawing showed it slithering around a cross. She tried to read the words, but the article was written in English. No matter, she’d get Giulia or Vicenzu to translate.

She blew her nose and sat. Her ballooning skirt forced more dust into her face, and she coughed, wishing she had known Bella in life. She was someone who would rather have worked with her hands and mind than with her body. The woman could have been a designer of high fashion, a creator of unique lines, expensive gowns for the nobility. Did all of Rosa’s women have dreams like Bella’s? She decided to take another look around. She’d be home just in time if she left by 11:30. That gave her forty more minutes.

She opened the second cabinet again, feeling around in the dim light for something she may have missed. Wedged between the
Godey’s
and the back of the cabinet were letters neatly tied into two packets. She scooped them up, stuffed them into her pockets, and stopped. If she were Bella, where would she hide valuables?

She looked behind the mirror. No holes. No patching. She walked the floor looking for loose boards: none. Of course, the bed. Why didn’t she think of it before? After feeling underneath for a box or hole in the boards, she yanked off the linen, ran her hand over the top and sides of the mattress, but found nothing. Wait until Rosa saw the mess she was making of ‘our sweet Bella’s room.’

Serafina thought she’d just enough muscle to flip the mattress, but try as she might, it wouldn’t budge. Stuffed with the feathers of a thousand geese, oh Madonna. She prayed for more strength, stopped to catch her breath, felt sweat beginning to bead on her forehead. With an upward thrust, she lifted the mattress, steadied it while it teetered on end for a moment before thudding against her body. The heft of it almost knocked her down. She waited, took ragged breaths, felt drops of water running down the sides of her body and losing themselves in a mass of moistening corset. Again she flexed her arms. With one large grunt, she pushed it. When it fell over, it shook the mirror on the wall, dislodging more dust.

She mopped her face, sat down, and stared. Then she felt every centimeter of its surface until her fingers found a neat square of stitching. After fishing around in the sewing basket for a scissors, she cut the thread and pulled out one feathery book. It looked like an account ledger. She shoved it into her pocket, picked up the
Godey’s
with the snaky designs, closed the door.

All that work for such a meager result. Perhaps reading the letters would reveal more information, something about the woman and her dreams, her friends, her enemies.

Dates

“W
hat did you find?”

“Not much. Any water?” she asked, wiping her face. Serafina dumped the letters, the
Godey’s
, and the account book on Rosa’s desk.

The madam stuffed the book down her front, reached for the bottle of mineral water, and poured a fresh glass. “You look worse than Scylla on a bad day. What have you been doing, luring young sailors to your lair?”

Serafina gulped the water, choked, and said, “That’s better. Dust in the mouth from Bella’s room.”

“That clown, Colonna, didn’t bother to search her room, and look what you discover in a few minutes. And the most important discovery of all,” she said, patting her chest. “This book belongs to Nittù.” Rosa winked.

The madam was in a jovial mood. Time to strike. “I need the names of the customers who visited Bella on Saturday. One of them might know something, might even be the killer. Anyone come to mind?” She watched Rosa’s face, now a wintry sunset.

“Bella had the evening off.”

“On a Saturday? Your busiest evening?”

“An exception to all the house rules, Bella. She asked for the weekend, left on Thursday. Probably went to Palermo to see the contessa. They were going to open a business of some sort.”

Serafina raised her brows.

“Not that kind of business. Venturing into the dressmaking trade, the two of them.”

Serafina opened the
Godey’s
and showed Rosa the plates of the writhing serpent, the strange vestments.

Rosa looked at them a moment and shrugged.

Serafina untied the bundles of letters and fanned them out. Sunlight and shadows from the sea undulated on the envelopes. They crinkled at her touch. “From her father,” Serafina said, indicating one. “But this address?” She tapped on the return address written in flowery script.

“From the contessa,” Rosa said.

“Don’t have time to read them now. I’d like to take these with me. They may tell us something we don’t already know, but I doubt it. And the
Godey’s
, I’ll take that, too.”

The madam sat there grinning, her fingers bent like hooks, not caring a jot about letters or magazines or serpents, only that she, Serafina, was being raked into the search for the killer.

And truth to tell, she felt herself drawn into the mystery, powerless to stop the pull of her own curiosity. Little wonder: the need for truth and justice was great. Sicily bled. Officials did nothing, and the dead women couldn’t speak for themselves. They needed her voice. Well, she would continue searching for clues until she found enough evidence to reveal the villain, dump it all into the lap of Colonna, and compel him to act. Simple.

• • •

She was half-way to the door when she said, “The dates?”

“What are you talking about?” Rosa asked.

“The first two bodies.”

“What about them?”

“You discovered Bella on October 7. But on what dates did you find the first two women?”

Muttering something about late for dinner, Rosa retrieved a large leather-bound book from the shelf behind her desk, its ecru pages smelling of broom and albumen. Serafina walked around to get a better look.

Rosa leafed through its pages. Each spread contained a month, seven columns across, with four or five rows down. The madam’s scrawl appeared in many of the squares.

Light from the sea swam over Rosa’s face. She turned to August.

Rosa said, “The beginning.”

The square for August 7th contained one word, ‘Gemma,’ written in Rosa’s scratch.

“The day you found Gemma?”

Rosa nodded.

Serafina turned the page.

Rosa gestured to September 7th and saw the word, ‘Nelli.’ “I opened the door. There was our darling Nelli. It dries the throat.”

Without looking up, Rosa refilled their glasses. “October.” Rosa gulped her water and caressed with a finger the name she’d written on the seventh, turned, and said, “You’re on my side of the desk.”

“Sorry. Only that—” Serafina stared into space.

“That what? I hate it when you do that.”

“Do what?” Serafina moved around and sat in her own chair, her skirts puffing.

Rosa put on her spectacles and began flipping the calendar pages back and forth. “Peasants are starving and you bite off a chunk of words and don’t finish them. At least spit them out before you stare into space.”

Serafina looked out to the sea, one finger tapping her chin.

“You are impossible! Always late, always three times as much time as I take, you take. Make three times as many words as you need. They cling to you, your words, like maggots on the dead.”

“I was going to say that if you found all three bodies on the seventh, it means the killer attacked on the sixth, or early on the seventh each time. Don’t you see? It means if he kills again—and he’ll try, mark my words, he’ll try—he’ll strike on the same date. It means we have until the sixth of November to find him before he kills again.”

Blanched, Rosa’s face.

Serafina continued. “There’s a systematic ghoulishness about these murders, a wildness about this killer that we will never understand. He lusts not after flesh, but has the cunning of the wild, intent on one thing only—eliminating you and all your women and the business you think I know so little about. For lucre? I doubt it.”

The madam’s eyes were flaking embers.

“Why the mark carved into their foreheads?” Serafina asked. “Why did each death occur between the sixth and the seventh of the month? We must discover how the victims’ lives touched their killer’s path. Why did these women need him? Agree to meet him? What did the three have in common, other than their profession and their address? How did they know their killer? Is he a customer who helped himself to all three? To others?”

“Never!”

“Who is the one woman most likely to be his next victim?”

The Apparition

Tuesday, October 9, 1866

S
erafina’s wardrobe wasn’t extensive, never expensive, wouldn’t do, not for her class. The dress she chose to wear this morning, made of watered silk trimmed in velvet, was designed and crafted by Giulia, her middle daughter, in a style dated by a year or two. For daytime, she wore a single petticoat, not too full in front, with an undergarment of unbleached silk ruffled at the collar. She fastened the ivory brooch her mother gave her, rouged her lips, and called for Assunta to help with her hair.

“Not too busy, something simple,” she told the domestic.

After Assunta left, she tied an embroidered net over her hair, just like Queen Maria Sofie would have worn. “Ready,” she called out to the air in the room.

There was a rattling at the window panes. The candles flickered. Serafina felt the rush of air. A new smell, sharp, like shaved citrus and lavender, flooded the room.

A cloud appeared, faded, and, in its place, a specter, vaporous at first, almost invisible, a frescoed glaze upon the cushions of Giorgio’s overstuffed chair. It grew more distinct, taking on the shape of a woman. Serafina saw her mother, Maddalena, crimson cheeked, skin moist, clothed in a gown of viridian deep. She’d forgotten how much like her own hair her mother’s was, at least before hers started to fade. Her mother was younger than Serafina herself.

Maddalena’s head turned in Serafina’s direction, but gazed through her, at something beyond. Wrinkling her nose, she turned her attention to an object in her lap, a midwife’s satchel. Her hands fiddled with the clasp. Her lips moved. She shook her head.

“Can’t you say hello to your own daughter?” Serafina asked.

Hunching her shoulders, Maddalena plunged one arm into the bag. She rattled objects inside, as if stirring old bones.

“Carmela’s gone and you do nothing. All alone, she is, knowing not of my death, nor of her father’s. You must find her.”

“But how?”

Maddalena stopped, lifted her head, wary and still, like a cat about to pounce. At the sound of footsteps, she vanished.

The doorknob turned.

“Are you coming? I’ll be late for my lesson.” Maria said. Her arms were full of schoolbooks and musical scores.

The Duomo’s bell chimed the hour. Seven o’clock and Serafina’s head ached.

Numbers

S
erafina and Maria traipsed across the piazza and opened the door to Lorenzo Coco’s music store where Maria had a lesson each day before school.

She smelled sawdust, resin, and glue. Instruments hung from the rafters. Minerva’s cello stood in the corner. The maestro was playing one of several harpsichords that sat the floor.

“How lovely. Scarlatti?”

“Mozart.” He continued to play as they talked.

“Isn’t it lovely, my precious?”

Maria hunched her shoulders.

“If only our little genius here would play pieces with more melody. I tell her she can’t go wrong with Scarlatti, but all she’s interested in at the moment is Brahms. Brahms this, Brahms that, chords crash.”

Lorenzo twisted his mouth and finished his sonata.

Maria clutched her books to her chest. Shy, Serafina’s youngest girl.

Serafina kissed her daughter goodbye. “Straight to school after your lesson.”

Minerva entered the room, tapping a white cane in front of her.

Serafina pecked the maestra’s cheeks. “I’d like your advice if I could steal some of your time while Maria takes her practice with the maestro.”

“My studio. Follow me.”

Serafina could hear Maria’s scales while she told Minerva about the investigation. “Dr. Loffredo is certain the women were killed by the same man.”

Minerva nodded.

“And I’m convinced he’s a wild creature who doesn’t kill for pleasure or to sate his appetite,” Serafina said, “but the dates he’s chosen to kill are significant in a way I don’t understand. He has killed one victim a month for three consecutive months, each murder occurring sometime between the sixth and seventh day.”

Minerva shuddered. “Not my field, numbers. But my brother is professor of mathematics, interested in the occult. I have an hour before my next lesson. I’ll introduce you. He lives on the edge of town.”

• • •

Professore Gasparo Rafaello lived alone in a small house filled with books. Not a dish out of place, no dust on the floor. After greetings were exchanged, the reason for their visit explained, and refreshments declined, they sat down.

The professor was a thin man. He wore a white shirt, grey vest, and sat on a wooden chair while the women faced him on the edge of a horsehair sofa. Minerva braced herself with her cane. Serafina squirmed. She hoped he was not long-winded.

A slight lisp obscured his words. Serafina strained to hear him. She reached in her reticule for her notebook and pencil.

With curled fingers he combed his mustache, addressing the two women as if they were students in a large auditorium. “So,” he said.