“Did he say when she’d be back?”
He shrugged. “He doesn’t expect her back until next week.”
“We ought to be able to talk our way in,” Rosa said.
“If we arrive by seven tomorrow morning, taking this train you speak of, we should be able to finish our business and meet with Valois at nine as planned,” Serafina said.
Rosa nodded.
“Reasonable, but I think we need a better plan for insinuating ourselves into her apartment,” Carmela said.
“Let me worry about that,” Rosa said.
“She plans to grease her way inside,” Serafina said.
“Do you have a better plan?” Rosa broke her bread, spreading it with pate.
Carmela put down her fork. “There might be a way to prove that the body is not that of Elena.” She took a sip of wine. “We need to ask Valois about the coroner’s report, whether or not the victim was with child. According to the women we met at the exhibit today, Elena boasted of her condition.”
“We might learn the name of her midwife from going through her desk,” Serafina said.
The main course was surpassed only by the dessert, a glace au four with mounds of creamy ice and topped in chocolate sauce that drizzled down the side. Even Teo smiled when he saw it.
On the way home Serafina’s corset pinched unmercifully. She gazed out the window but was unaware of time passing until they’d been delivered to their door and Rosa touched her arm, telling her to get out of the carriage.
Chapter 15: A Visit to Elena’s Apartment
Teo licked his lips thinking of Maria’s hands on the keyboard. He thought of their beauty and suppleness. Of her concentration. He wondered how one person could be born with so much talent.
One day she would be his friend again and life between them would be better. After all, she did walk to school with him that one time, so there was hope. He swallowed, remembering the last morning they’d walked together and how she’d talked to him about Brahms and how most people in Oltramari misunderstood his music. “Most people in Oltramari never heard of Brahms,” he’d said. But she hadn’t been listening. A group of her friends had overtaken them. They pointed their fingers at him, calling him moon face and sniggering. After that, Maria refused to walk with him. He forced the memory from his mind.
When he wasn’t working with Carmela, Teo tried to think of the perfect gift he could bring Maria from Paris. If he attended a concert, he could tell her about it. But how would he do that? He’d seen a notice in the Galignani Guide of an organ recital at St. Sulpice and found the church on the map. He’d missed the concert, but perhaps he could find a program lying about in the square. He stared out the window, his hand on the sash about to close it, mesmerized by all the horse-drawn vehicles, the laughter, the streets lit by hundreds of gas lamps.
In the Place du Palais Royal below, he saw a new machine, one he’d never seen at home. Carmela called it a bicycle. Now several men about his age stood on the edge of the square holding the wheeled contraption between them and jostled for a turn to work the pedals. They snorted, full of life, happy, hopeful, like most of the people in this city.
Teo felt a stone lodge in his throat. What chance would he have against all the gentlemen Maria would meet when she began playing in Paris or Berlin or New York? He was an orphan with a moon face from a rusted-out part of the world. He had nothing to his name except a set of knucklebones carved long ago by his father.
Rubbing his hands on his breeches, Teo peered out the window taking one last look at the men and women walking in the square below, dressed in finery so different from his own plain clothes. The bicycle and the young men were gone, but he saw someone he recognized talking to a driver wearing a top hat. Teo watched as the driver helped the woman into a carriage. It was Donna Fina. He hurried down the steps and outside.
After she said goodnight to the others, Serafina found herself restless, unable to ready herself for sleep. She had to get out and walk. They’d be seeing Valois the next day and she must be prepared with as much information as possible. She couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to leave investigating Elena’s apartment until tomorrow-they’d have to rise at four, in less than three hours. What better time to explore than tonight? So she ran outside, hailed a cab, and gave the driver Elena’s address.
The horses clattered over the cobbles, noisy like her stomach. Despite the late hour Parisians were still out enjoying the evening, some with their dogs, but most of them with their lovers walking along the quai, stopping for a heated embrace. At one point the driver halted for congestion, an altercation ahead, perhaps. From the corner of her eye she saw an aging woman of the night trussed up in street garb, frilly red lace, her face artfully painted and pointed toward the stars as she leaned against a lamppost, blowing smoke. When the carriage passed, Serafina watched the woman’s hips swaying suggestively as she moved away, head held high. A moment later, she disappeared. Serafina swore all the women in Paris, even the poorest, had exciting taste, wore the latest style, or made the most of what they had. Except for her. The night was young and so alive. She missed Loffredo.
The carriage stopped in front of a large building on the Rue de Passy facing a quaint square. She paid the fare and asked the driver to wait, but he declined, saying she’d have no trouble hiring another cab and pointing to a line of fiacres on the other side of the Place de Passy. Waving a dismissive hand and holding her skirts, she made her way up the staircase. She knocked and a liveried servant answered the door and showed her inside.
The building’s concierge sat behind his desk reading an ancient copy of Le Figaro. Handing her card to him, she suddenly felt tongue-tied and began to stammer.
“May I help you, Madame?”
“I am here to visit Elena Loffredo.”
Smelling of cheap wine and wearing a threadbare frock coat, the concierge ran a pink hand down a large ledger, shaking his head. In a few moments he looked up at her with fat lips, reminding her of Oltramari’s embalmer.
“A pity, you have just missed her. You see my note here.” He swung the ledger around to show her an illegible scrap near Elena’s name.
Serafina played her card. “But we’d arranged to meet. She expects me now as a matter of fact.” She looked at her watch. “Oh, I see, I’m a few minutes early. Would you mind terribly if I…” she looked around… “too drafty for me in the lobby. In a large building like this there must be many visitors. I’d hate to catch a cold. Evening air, you see. Might I wait for her upstairs in her apartment? We’re old friends. I’m from the same town as she is in Sicily.”
“Unfortunately, Madame, I hate to-”
Serafina slipped some bills underneath the ledger.
The concierge smiled. “Right this way. The countess occupies the two top floors.”
The building had a lift with a grill instead of a door and she was able to see out as they passed the floors. She and the concierge squeezed in together. She listened as they creaked their way up to Elena’s apartment on the top two floors. As they passed one of the lower floors, she looked out and saw the figure of a woman clad in black, doubled over as if in pain, but quickly passing from view. When they reached the top floor, the concierge unlocked Elena’s door and turned on a few of the gas lamps in the hall and parlor.
“I’m on duty for the next thirty minutes, so please ring for me if there’s anything else I may do for you. Otherwise, should you tire before the contessa returns, extinguish the lights and shut the door.”
The rooms in Elena’s apartment were cold, drafty, the grates unused, although there seemed to be… yes… she found a radiator. Like their hotel rooms, the apartments here were heated. She looked at the ceiling, the walls, the furniture. A preponderance of plaster and gilt. Paintings hung in all the rooms, but she didn’t have time or enough light to admire them. Everything seemed expensive and well maintained, although there was a film of dust on the furniture and love seats, grit on the carpets and floor.