Serafina told Rosa about her brush with the deserter.
Rosa clenched her chest. “Anything to do with the murders?”
Serafina shook her head. “I don’t think so. A deserter living rough, my guess.”
Renata said, “If it weren’t for Arcangelo, who knows what would have happened. We have you to thank for him.”
“Told her, I did, not safe at night with only Beppe.”
While Rosa beamed, Serafina thought the time was ripe to strike with some uncomfortable questions. “Who do you think is the killer of your women?” she asked.
“In front of Tessa?” Renata asked.
Rosa batted the air and said with her mouth full of cookies, “My Tessa knows everything, don’t you, Tessa?”
She nodded.
“Would you like a cookie?” Renata asked.
Tessa shook her head.
Rosa swallowed. “Why would I be sitting here with you on a rocking train, filling my belly with figs and your daughter’s ossa da mordere if I knew the answer to your question?”
“But you have an idea?”
“Ideas, they come into my head, convince me for a day, and, like the larks of summer, fly away with the first icy wind.”
“After Gemma died, who did you think might be the killer?”
Rosa’s face reddened. “At first I thought it must be a relative or someone from the past. Or Gemma’s mourner.”
“Say again?” Serafina asked.
“To Gemma’s wake there came a mourner.”
Serafina consulted her notes. “You didn’t tell me about him, but the embalmer did.”
“I’m telling you now. As we were about to leave, the room, full, the priest finished with his prayers, a man, not old, not young, he came up to the casket, raised his fist, cursed the corpse.” Rosa wiped her forehead. “Escorted out, he was.”
“A customer?”
“There you go again. Never!”
“The embalmer said he had ‘seeping eyes.’”
“What?”
“’They watered, but not from grief. The eyes, disconnected from the mouth,’ he told me.”
“I searched for him, didn’t I? Had the guards scour the land for an angry father, a jealous suitor. Nothing. After Nelli’s murder, I became confused. The two, Gemma and Nelli, were from different towns, had no relatives in common, no friends together, so I gave up, didn’t bother telling you about the man at Gemma’s wake, the tricky one.”
“And any ideas after that?”
“Why do you ask me these questions?”
“You trust Scarpo?”
Rosa looked like she was caught in a spell. “Scarpo, the killer? Utter nonsense. What are you saying?”
“All I’m saying is that we need to look at everyone around us with new eyes.”
“Wild words spit from your mouth. It’s little wonder you can’t keep your daughter at home.”
“Where was he, Scarpo, around the time of the murders?” Serafina continued. “The afternoon, the evening, the night before you found the bodies?”
“My house, of course. Scarpo doesn’t leave unless he has an errand in town. Devoted to me, he is. At night he’s always there. The house would fall without him. Who’d see to the guards, call the time, collect the money, throw out the scruffy ones, scare off the bandits?”
“What was the first thing you did after you saw Gemma’s body?”
“Screamed and…and what did I do? I pulled the cord? I don’t remember, I must have done. People poured in from all around, upstairs, the front parlors. All the girls were around me, I think, and Scarpo. Arcangelo went for Colonna.”
“Any of the women missing? Away? On a day off?”
The madam considered. “Bella was the only one. She had the weekend off. All the others were at the house, but if one of them were gone, what would that mean? Nothing. These killings are the work of a wild devil with a thirst for my coins.”
“But he could have had help from inside,” Renata said.
“For instance, Eugenia, the thief,” Serafina said. “And several of the women said the house has changed.”
Rosa nodded. Tears formed in her lower lids. “Different now and strange. Silent, the girls, or they whisper in the halls. We used to be so lovely-so gay, so droll-before the killing started. Just like a family.”
“You mean before Eugenia came,” Serafina said.
“You mean like a family during good times,” Renata said, “because families can be silent and untrusting, too, when something bad happens.”
Serafina shot her a look. “Enough Renata. Let’s stay fixed on these killings, nothing else. I know what you’re up to, you and Carlo, but not here, not now.”
Renata and Rosa looked at each other.
“If you die, does Scarpo gain?”
“You always have a way to make me squirm. Why ask such questions?”
Serafina watched the purple spread over her friend’s cheek and waited.
“Who’d gain from my death? — Tessa, not Scarpo. I fooled them, those greasy officials. They said I couldn’t adopt her, being a woman without a husband, but I have a smart avvucatu who knows all the ins and outs.” Rosa twirled her hands in the air. “Struts around the courts like a silky black rooster. Expensive he might be, but knows the laws of inheritance and how to make them work for me. Not enough to have a will. He made it work.” Rosa moved plaintive hands up and down. “Tessa inherits my estate, all of it. How does that answer fit into your theories, oh fancyIspetturi?”
Serafina chewed the inside of her cheek. “Didn’t she need a husband?”
“Two: one for me, one for her. Cost extra. He took care of it, my handsome avvucatu.”
“You’re married?”
“Deceased, the spouse. Tessa’s, too.” Rosa made a placatory gesture with her hands. “Suggested him to Nittù, I did, after his sons perished.”
“Nittù?”
“How many times must I tell you. Nittù Baldassare, Bella’s father. The man we visit today. What’s wrong with you? Mind stuck?”
Renata passed the basket of food again. Rosa reached for several cookies, a slice of cheese, and a fig. They all ate something, even Serafina.
A conductor with a purple nose opened the door to their compartment. He offered drinks from his beverage trolley. The three women asked for caffè which the conductor poured from a dented tin pot. Thick as molasses, the drink, steeped for days, it seemed to Serafina, but it was wet and washed down their food. With a flourish, the conductor handed Tessa an orange drink.
After he left, they were silent for a while. Serafina picked at her food and stared at the passing scenery, swaying back and forth, lulled by the movement.
Presently she said, “Sometimes, you know, I think I need a crowbar to pry information out of you. But I will say this: you have an amazing group of women who work for you, amazing. And all to your credit.”
Rosa’s eyes sparked. “But? Out with it.”
“I’ll bet Don Tigro would love to get his hands on your business.”
“Never.” Rosa sat on her velvet seat like a Sicilian Buddha.
“I want to talk about this figure in brown that Scarpo describes lurking about your house.” She told them about her encounter with the begging monk in the piazza shortly after Bella died. “Wearing gloves and boots. Called himself Don Roberto. He smelled like a thousand foreign sheep. I’m convinced he’s the same man Scarpo saw at the blacksmith’s, the same one Arcangelo saw when he drove Gemma to meet her uncle on the evening before you found her body-the last time she was seen alive, except by her killer.”
Rosa’s eyes took on a haunted look. She reached across and stroked Tessa’s cheek.
Serafina read her notes. “’A man, tall, in wintry clothes,’ that’s the way Arcangelo described Gemma’s uncle, or his driver, at least the one who picked up Gemma.”
Rosa smiled. “Arcangelo, bad with his colors.”
“And here’s what Scarpo said about him, ‘There’s one, a stranger…he wears brown and smells funny, not from around here.’ And something else about their descriptions, something odd, the detail that convinces me it’s the same man they’re talking about, this man wearing brown: both Scarpo and Arcangelo say the man was wearing gloves and the weather was warm.”