“Hard to say.” She shrugged. “Some kind of vegetable, or perhaps just soapy water. That would cause the mark. We worked on it hard, and in the end there was no trace of it, as you say. If it had been wine or blood, well… Take a good look, we’re proud of our work.” She brought the dress over to the counter and showed Serafina, touching it with fingers that were tender, gentle although they were red and swollen from years of work and from whatever substance was used to dry clean clothes. “Made an awful mess, darker than the cloth, but see, no trace of it anymore, not even on the silk underside.”
Serafina left the store and took great gulps of fresh air. She examined her watch pin, glad that she’d paid her driver to wait because she wanted to pay a surprise visit to Elena’s current lover. Unfolding her map as she walked back to Rue de Vaugirard, she stopped underneath the nearest streetlamp and pinpointed the Rue d’Assas. It took her a only a few minutes to find number 23, a narrow but tall building next door to a monastery.
A short butler in fussy garb answered her knock and escorted her to the visitor’s parlor after she asked to speak with Monsieur Etienne Gaston.
“I’ll see if he’s receiving.”
“Tell him I’m a friend of Elena Loffredo.”
The man’s face blanched. “One moment.” He flounced out of the room.
She waited more than a few moments and had a chance to look around, admiring the floor to ceiling books in the receiving room. An oriental carpet lay on the parquet floor and a crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling. In the bay window stood a black walnut table with carved legs, the top covered with a damask cloth underneath a lamp with a fringed shade. A wooden box sat next to it with Gaston’s name engraved on a brass plaque. No dust anywhere, and she suspected that everything was in its place and for show. Even the books looked as if they were arranged by size. In one corner was a harpsichord and Serafina imagined Maria running to it. Suddenly the room shifted and she had trouble breathing. She missed home.
To pass the time, she walked over to the instrument. The casing was covered with an elaborate inlay. Absentmindedly, she touched the wood and was standing next to it, fingering the keys when Gaston entered the room.
“Do you play?” he asked. Before she could reply, he walked quickly to her, a thin man, taller than Loffredo, and she held out her hand. His lips brushed it lightly. “Etienne Gaston.”
“My youngest daughter plays, a prodigy. Unfortunately she couldn’t travel with us on this visit.”
“A pity. And you are?”
The man didn’t offer her a seat, so she took one after handing him her card. “I’m a friend of Elena Loffredo. And you are lovers.”
The man blushed but did not deny it. “A brash manner of speaking, you’re obviously not from France, Madame.”
“I’ve traveled from Oltramari, Elena’s hometown. I’ve been commissioned to investigate her… disappearance.”
He pursed his lips, said nothing. Could it be that like the rest of her friends, he hadn’t heard of her death?
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“I’d have to consult my calendar.”
Serafina decided to say nothing and waited for him to speak. Silence, she found worked wonders. In time Gaston squirmed. He rubbed his chin, patted the pockets of his smoking jacket, a very interesting garment, velvet, perhaps indigo, hard to see in the dim light of the room. “Excuse me while I consult my appointment book.”
She bit her tongue instead of making a remark and wished she’d taken Rosa along, imagining how the madam would handle him. She took the plunge. “Oh, how silly of me not to see it before this, but I’ve just noticed your jacket, what an exquisite garment. No wonder Elena is so taken with you.”
The man smiled. “Do you think so? It was a gift from my mother some years ago.”
“And looks so well on you. For a scholar, you maintain yourself very well. Some men begin to look like the chairs they sit in, and while I’m sure you sit most of the day reading and writing and so forth, yet you have the physique of a man who works in the open air, without his roughness of course.”
“Such a nice compliment.”
“Not so, I assure you.”
He looked at her card. “Madame Florio, I have just-”
“I don’t wish to take up much of your time. I know you must be so busy preparing your talks and reading and whatever else it is you scholars do. Just help me with the answers to one or two questions, that’s all, I beg you.” She smiled, batted her lashes, wishing she’d rouged her face.
“Hmm, the last time I saw Elena. You know her well? She can be quite beguiling. Quite.”
“Surprising, a free spirit, I’d call her,” Serafina said. “In many ways unique. We’ve known each other since we were very young.”
He smiled. “Then you’ve known each other a very long time.”
She betrayed nothing, deserved it, perhaps, but she kept a quiet face.
“She takes me to interesting places and last week was no exception,” he said. “We went to… how to describe it. We attended an opening.”
“Sponsored by the Salon?”
“Quite the opposite, I’m afraid. No, unfortunately, an exhibit of twenty-five or thirty painters, similar in style and temperament, it seemed. Hundreds of the things hung in Felix Nadar’s studio. He lent it to them for the occasion. Lighting not so good, but they drew a large crowd. Many of them are Elena’s friends. She’s taken with them. I found them uninteresting at best, some lacking all ability. However, I went to please her.”
“And that was the last time you saw her?”
“Yes.”
“At the exhibit? You didn’t go to a cafe afterward, perhaps for a drink?”
“As I might have mentioned, I’m quite busy, Madame. Not that you’d be interested, but I’m preparing a paper on the world perception of French thought for the Academy. No, unfortunately, I saw her to a cab and we made an early night of it.”
“On the Boulevard des Capucines?”
“Precisely.”
“So you didn’t notice her in your bed that night? Hard to miss, I should think.
Gaston blanched.
“You see, I happen to know you took the garment she wore that night to the nettoyage a sec on the Rue Cassette. By the way, it’s ready for you to pick up, a lovely frock, hanging in the window. They’ve done a brilliant job. The stain is gone, totally gone.”
He stared at her, the light in his eyes extinguished. A succession of emotions brushed over his face-exasperation, anger, fear, amusement.
“Not difficult to see why you and Elena are friends. You’ve caught me out, good work. I admire that.” He stood, walked back and forth and faced her. “Elena is my temptation. I cannot do without her.”
She was silent for a while, letting the man have his emotion, watching him sink back into the chair.
“Too much, she is too much at times. Her friends are… no one I’d want to associate with. The exhibit, how can I put it, the work of beginners. And she’s so taken with them. Sometimes she can be so mean, so unthinking.”
Serafina thought he was about to cry and compassion for the man overtook her.
He slumped forward, elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. “One minute she tells me we’re through, that she can’t stand me, and the next she tells me she’s going to have my child. I don’t understand her. I proposed to her Thursday night after she told me about the child, but she laughed at me. She said after two months or so of marriage, I’d bore her.”
“And is that why you killed her?”
Startled, he stared at her. “I’d never touch Elena, except in tenderness. Never.” He stood and paced the floor some more.
She could hear monks chanting next door. “Let’s back up. When did you last see Elena? What hour was it?”
“After the exhibit, we went to the Cafe Odile. It’s around the corner on the Rue de Vaugirard. Not my kind of establishment, but she loved it. We had wine, talked to some of the other patrons, and then we came here. We… spent the night together. Or at least I thought we’d spend the night together, but she left shortly after we made love-right here in this room, if you can believe it. She tore off her dress here and… she was passionate, wild, almost mad. After that, I thought we’d sleep together, in bed. I mean, spend the night together, sighing, touching, sleeping, the way couples do, but she picked up her dress, chastising me for soiling it. She asked if I’d have it cleaned since I was the one who ruined it. I said nothing. We went upstairs, but instead of crawling into bed, she riffled through her closet, choosing a set of clothes and told me goodbye. ‘This is goodbye, Etienne, you boring old thing.’”