Chapter 16: The Lawyer Visits Loffredo
A few days after Loffredo was imprisoned, his lawyer paid him a visit. He advised him to plead guilty. He told Loffredo that he’d made inquiries and because of Elena’s reputation in Paris and the fact that she’d been estranged for seven years, he’d be given a light sentence in exchange for a guilty plea. “A crime of passion, nothing more, old chap.” He’d be released in a few months. Loffredo refused, telling the lawyer he was innocent. He asked for paper and wrote to Serafina while his lawyer waited, tapping his fingers on the top of the table.
Once a day they led him to a small courtyard where he exercised. After a week of this with no word from anyone, he boxed with the earth, forming his hands into fists and pounding the ground beneath his feet and then on the stone walls, but a whistle blew and guards cuffed him and took him back to his cell. After the incident with the stones, his shoelaces and razor were removed. Small creatures grew in his beard. When he tried to imagine his library in Oltramari, the picture faded. Freedom in the mind be damned.
One morning a new guard brought him bread and cafe. The cafe was strong, the bread warm and fresh. The guard smiled and called him “my lord.” That afternoon he heard the key turning the tumblers. The friendly guard opened the door. He carried shaving utensils. Loffredo was told to ready himself for a visitor. Another guard appeared who restrained him with ankle and wrist cuffs and the two guards led him to the visitors’ room. The clanking of the chains on the floor reverberated on his teeth. Rosa stood when he entered. Her eyes teared when she saw him.
Chapter 17: L’Hopital del la Charite
Pinned down by clutching hands, Serafina says something to Giulia or is it to Giorgio, they look so much alike. Giorgio’s dead but he stands by her side. She came to Paris to search for something and found him instead.
A new dress for you, Mama, you’ve ruined your old one. A robe, too, and slippers from Le Bon Marche. He told us he was dead and all along he’s been here. I found him hiding in the Elena’s apartment. Rosa, too, she’s here but slips down. Her face falls off the wall, fading into white. Everything in white, I must be dead.
Someone says, “Breathe into the mask,” but the mask holds her down, gives her visions. If only Giorgio would stay. A force pins her down.
“When she wakes, we’ll send for you.”
What is it you found in the apartment that fills you with so much dread? Let me be, let me shed my life. Painting makes me see so much. She feels something pierce her, but it is a child’s finger pressing into her shoulder, a baby’s cry, a kitten’s paw, the voice gruff.
Footsteps, a shot. There it is, I found it, the ghost of a plan, flee this world and what I’ve become. Fight, she tells herself but the breath in the mask mesmerizes. It is magic.
Faces crowd into one another, disappear. She’s flown too close to the sun. She floats above her body, captured by the blinding light, peering down at herself on a table while men and women move around her.
“My pocket, in my pocket, the calendar and the kitten.”
“She’s dreaming. Let her sleep.”
Serafina opened her eyes. She was in a strange bed. The room smelled of ether, blood and urine, the place rivaling the stench of the embalmer’s basement in Oltramari. Smiling men in black robes, their hands folded, stood by her bedside. Rosa and Carmela held each other. Two peeked into the room from the doorway, Arcangelo and Teo. Tessa, too. Catching Serafina’s eye, they straightened and smiled.
“You’ve had a nasty few hours, but you’ll be fine, no thanks to your judgment,” Rosa said, her voice gravelly.
“It was the dessert at the Maison Doree,” Serafina said.
“If you ever go off on your own again…” Carmela paused, seemed at a loss for the right words, and choked. “What made you go out alone? If it weren’t for Teo and Arcangelo, we never would have found you, and you would have bled to death in Elena’s apartment. What you did wasn’t courageous or cunning, it was idiotic. And now you’ll miss your appointment with the French inspector.”
She tried to sit up, but the pain was too great. “Where am I?”
“She doesn’t understand yet. Give her a few hours,” the religious brother said.
“I’m going to be sick.” She closed her eyes, but the room and the people kept spinning.
“Where am I?”
“ L’Hopital del la Charite, left bank, and I’m Frere Michel. I run the hospital. You took a bullet in the shoulder. You were very lucky, it lodged in the muscle, but played havoc with your clavicle. Bits chipped off. Fractured, I’m afraid. Lucky for you, we had our best surgeon on duty. He had a job cleaning it up, found some shards here and there which he had to remove, and a bullet which we’ve given to the police. But the shoulder is intact. No permanent damage. I don’t know when you’ll be able to use your arm, certainly not in the next few months.”
“Left or right?”
“Sleep, now,” she heard Giorgio say.
“Is the baby all right?”
“She’s delirious,” she heard Rosa say. “She’s a midwife.”
She didn’t listen to Giorgio. “The French don’t know what they’re talking about. I must go home. The kitten and the baby. Find Elena.” Was that her voice?
“Do you listen to anyone?” That was Rosa’s unmistakable gravel.
She tried levering herself up using her good elbow and became so dizzy she had to bend to the bowl again.
“All last night’s good food wasted on a stubborn sleuth.”
When she woke, a figure, dark but familiar, stood against the light from the window. Was it the shadowy man come to finish her off?
He rubbed his lapel.
She squinted up at him. “Good morning.”
“Good evening, you mean. You’ve slept the whole day.”
She opened one eye, her good hand visoring the crimson rays of the sun.
“But the sun is…”
“Setting, I’m afraid. My wife sends you these from her garden.”
“How lovely.” Serafina had never seen such beautiful flowers before, small and delicate stems, droopy, the petals like the ears of elves. A nun took them from his hand. She wore a habit the same color as the flowers. Folded wings covered her head. Serafina heard the click of beads and listened to her footsteps recede.
She sank back into the pillow. “The hospitals have private rooms in Paris?”
“Only for special patients,” Valois said. “The prefect arranged it. You were shot and we feared for your life. Two policemen have been assigned to guard you.”
“How did you know where to find me?”
“Rosa. I owe you an apology.”
The madam smiled. “She’s difficult, sometimes I think not worth the trouble, but we’ve been friends too long to sever ties in Paris. One more trick like this, however…”
The inspector continued. “The pictures of the dead woman are still missing. I asked the photographer to make duplicates, but he can’t find the plates, so I suspect someone did not want you to see them, someone with a long and influential reach.”
Serafina nodded slowly as if she understood everything he said and told him two men had been following her ever since she was commissioned by Elena’s father to find his daughter’s murderer.
“We saw them in Oltramari and in Marseille and here in Paris.”
“The same men?”
Carmela nodded and told him about their encounters with the men in Marseille and Paris.
The inspector was intrigued enough to write himself a note. “I took your two young men with me and we searched your friend’s apartment today.”
“In Sicily, we need an order from the courts for that, not that we always stand on ceremony,” Serafina said.
“Obviously,” Rosa said.
“Here we follow the rules. We obtained a warrant to search the apartment. When your countess friend returns, if she’s still alive, she’ll find quite a mess, all the drawers in the apartment emptied, the clothes searched. It looked like she left in haste. The bed in one room was unmade.”