“We know that the dead woman was not with child, but riddled with syphilis and would have died in a matter of months, this from the mouth of the medical examiner,” Rosa said.
This was new information for Loffredo, and he seemed visibly shaken. For a moment he stared out, unseeing, absorbed in his thoughts.
Two couples walked past their bench, the women in day dresses of beautiful silk, talking conspiratorially, the men walking some distance behind. Serafina stared at two boys playing jacks.
“So we have six knowns and six unknowns,” she said. “And the most important?”
“We don’t know where Elena is,” Rosa said.
Serafina nodded. She told them about the advertisement she’d placed in the daily papers a few days ago. “It runs each day for the next ten days.” She passed a copy to Rosa.
They were silent while Rosa and Loffredo read the classified.
“I don’t think it will do much good, but I tried it, just in case.” Serafina felt her temples begin to throb. “All might be cleared up if we could find Elena, so that’s what we must do.”
“We agree,” Rosa said and Loffredo nodded. “As soon as we exhume the body and prove it beyond doubt.”
Serafina worried her lower lip. “There were three paintings by Paul Cezanne, do you remember them?”
Rosa shook her head. “I liked them all. Different. But what does that have to do with anything?”
“A lot. The three I’m thinking about weren’t painted in Paris or in a place with the same light.”
“Listen to those painters talk and they’ll have you believing that each moment the light is different,” Rosa said.
“Not quite the point I’m trying to make. The light and the feeling are so different in Cezanne’s paintings. They have nothing to do with Paris except perhaps for that reclining nude.”
Rosa pointed her finger in the air. “Now I remember them. But what does that have to do with anything?”
Serafina looked at Loffredo. “Didn’t you tell me she had an apartment in Aix?”
“Yes, but that was several years ago, during the Franco Prussian War. She fled the city along with her friends. I don’t think she’s kept it. Why would she? All her friends are in Paris.” He wiped his face with his palm.
“We don’t know that for sure.”
“And don’t forget, I found an envelope addressed to Elena, an address in Arles,” Serafina reminded them.
“Quite a distance between Arles and Aix, at least seventy-five kilometers, I think,” Loffredo said.
“In the south of France, a perfect place to hide. Why do her friends think Elena is not dead? Someone must be hiding her.”
“Or perhaps they are in their own world,” Rosa said. “They don’t seem to like her very much.”
“How do you know? You’ve talked to Carmela who spoke with only two of them.”
There was a silence. Rosa looked at her watch and said she must meet Tessa in Pere La Chaise.
Loffredo looked at Serafina who told him about Rosa’s infatuation with Murat.
After the madam left, Serafina gazed at Loffredo. Not given to ebullience, he was even more taciturn than usual. Indeed, he wasn’t talking unless a question was directed his way. It was as if a weight lay upon his spirit, and Serafina realized he was grieving. She could tell by the way he looked into her eyes. Still hungry for her, yes, but not with their usual mirth.
“Still, I think we must concentrate on Elena. She’s disturbed; she’s pregnant.” Serafina looked at Loffredo. “And she has an illness, or at least there’s a reason why she’s behaving erratically.”
“Not erratic behavior on Elena’s part, not for her,” he said, shaking his head. “She is flighty, whimsical, dramatic, outre.”
“I haven’t spent enough time thinking like Elena, other than going to the exhibit and seeking out her friends there. What would she do during the day? Go to the Tuileries, the Luxembourg?” Serafina ran a hand through her curls. “How about The Parc Monceau? La Muette?”
Loffredo shook his head.
“What are her favorite restaurants? Where did she shop? Did she collect old books and prints, silver? Pretend I’m Elena,” Serafina said, and knew by his look that she’d made a mistake.
Loffredo snapped his head back as if she’d hit him, but then the smile she knew so well lit up his face, and he began to laugh, and some of the day’s heaviness lifted. Some, but not all. She felt the flatness of his spirit return, covering him like a blanket, and remembered her mother’s counsel, her mother who lived a life learning to shore up her father’s low spirits one day at a time. “In the end, you must let them have their moods,” she’d say, and shake her head. And she’d let her father stay in his study for days. But she, Serafina, did not have that luxury. She needed to find Elena, and she needed Loffredo’s help. “Pick a place, any place. What did you do the last day you were with Elena?”
He was silent, but she could tell he was thinking.
She gave him more time to collect himself. “The exhibit was so important to Elena and to her friends. It was a turning point in their lives, a watershed. Finally after working so long and so hard, they banded together, or most of them did, and hung their most important works. Consider the visual impact of this exhibit, especially on Elena. For the first time, hundreds of paintings by a new school of artists could be seen for the first time. It must have been a clamoring. It must have had shattering effect on Elena, flighty and impressionable as she is, like the firing of a battle’s first cannon shot. She may have felt left out, passed over.”
“You mean, no one was paying attention to her,” he said.
It was Serafina’s turn to laugh. “That, too. It might have caused her to change tack, to try and alter her life, to act in an extreme fashion.”
“Extreme? That’s the way she always was. But I know what you mean.” He nodded slowly.
She felt his mind begin to work on the problem.
“And don’t forget, she’s pregnant, and I know what that’s like. Poor lost Elena,” Serafina murmured.
“The last time we were here-that was a few years ago. She called me to Paris for a ball, I forget which one. At that time she was trying to make a general jealous. It was right after the Commune, and Paris had been devastated-over twenty-thousand needlessly slain-but afterward, the city put on its summer finery. The days were long and despite the coppery smell in the air-the blood had not yet sunk deep enough into the soil-the people, well, the people were happy to be alive. It was enough to be out of the house, greeting neighbors, walking in the warmth and sure-footedness of peace. Elena sent me a note to meet her here, and I did, over by the Medici pool. At that time Elena had an apartment near the Luxembourg and used to walk here often.”
He paused and Serafina swept her eyes around, at the sandstone gravel paths straight and lined with trees, at the Palais du Luxembourg where men with shovels were planting and weeding the beds of exuberant flowers, at the Parisians dressed in the latest style. They were everywhere, strolling arm in arm, sitting on benches, the children laughing, running, shouting.
“But Elena being Elena, grew restless, asked me to walk with her. We took the Rue Bonaparte all the way to the Seine. On the little streets surrounding the Ecole des Beaux Arts, we went into all the little shops and she bought what she loved, prints, old books, candelabra, large swaths of fabric, small paintings. I realized that she wanted me with her so I could carry her parcels.”
He looked at Serafina with such warm, sad eyes.
“Did she know the shopkeepers?”
He thought a moment. “Many of them, I believe she did. Arranged to have her living room painted or the walls treated.”
Serafina stood and smoothed her skirt. “Then we must go. We must talk to all of them.”
Rosa looked at her watch. “We have a few hours until most of them close their shops for the evening.”
Loffredo, Rosa, and Serafina walked into the late afternoon sun, the shadows growing, the streets and sidewalks thick with people, most smartly attired and purposeful, probably heading home. They passed the Place St. Sulpice and the bells sounded the hour. They kept walking through the student quarter to Saint Germain des Pres where Serafina stopped in front of the facade and said a prayer to the Virgin to help her see the truth. They walked to the Quai Voltaire and whispered to the Seine, Loffredo planting a chaste kiss on her forehead. Happy to be in each other’s company, she and Loffredo walked the many side streets, looking into shop windows, occasionally pointing to something that piqued their curiosity or pleased them.