“Victorine,” Carmela said, “how lovely to see you.” She introduced Serafina. Rosa joined them.
“We hear that Elena is in the south of France.”
“Who told you? Weren’t s’posed to say anything.”
“Oh well, we knew but not from anyone in the room. Arles?”
“Not sure. Arles or Aix-en-Provence, someplace down there. Think I might have the address in my studio.” She gulped her wine. “Woman thinks she’s a painter. Nonsense. Fraud. Slut. What does she know of painting, of… posing?”
Serafina watched her, fascinated. Her face was divine. She could see why artists loved to paint her.
“But poor, lost Elena. I don’t blame her. She’s at the end of the line and knows it. If you want to see real art, come to my studio, I’ll show you.”
“We’d love to, Carmela said. “When?”
She waved a hand. “Anytime.”
“But give us the address. Tomorrow?”
Victorine gave them the address of her studio on the Rue Maitre Albert. “You know it? Small, narrow street. Left bank, hidden. The quiet of Paris afternoons gathers in my studio.”
“We’d love to see your work.” Remembering Victorine had offered once to show Tessa her studio but hadn’t shown up at the appointed hour, Carmela added. “We’re looking for works to add to our collection.”
The rest of the evening was a drag for Serafina. The talk was too heady for her, and she longed to be with Loffredo. Besides, she’d gotten what she wanted. One look at Tessa, however, and Serafina knew they must stay. Mallarme recited his poetry to a hushed audience. Afterward he introduced, a young boy called Debussy, a twelve-year-old student at the Paris Conservatory. They rolled out a grand piano from the far corner and the boy sat and played. Serafina thought of how much Maria was missing and of how cruel she’d been not to let her daughter come with them.
Chapter 30: Les Halles
Serafina gazed around the large lobby, looking for Loffredo who said he’d meet them there, but she didn’t see him. She examined her watch, close to midnight. Perhaps he’d gotten tired of waiting for them. She didn’t blame him. They were tired, but also hungry. “Famished,” was the word Rosa used.
In a few minutes she saw Teo and Arcangelo talking and laughing with someone in the far corner of the room. Loffredo. He smiled at Rosa, came around to Carmela and told her how beautiful she was, then to Serafina and took her in his arms.
“I’ve been waiting all night for you.”
“Let’s go to one of the restaurants in the hotel and we can order-”
“I’ve got a better idea,” he said. “I want to show all of you a sight you won’t believe. But you must promise to tell Renata about it.”
“Do they have food?” Rosa asked. “All we had to eat were some little doughy things. And the conversation, you wouldn’t believe. Lucky you weren’t there. Tonight I’ve been buried in words, words that mean nothing to me.”
“Artistic thought, it was enchanting,” Tessa said.
“I know, my pet. But it’s hard for my mind to soar without food. This place better be good,” Rosa said to Loffredo.
“You can order anything you want, and it’s a place that never sleeps. Vendors come from all over France. It’ll be an experience you won’t forget.”
Carmela, Tessa, and Rosa needed to freshen up in their rooms, and while they waited for them, Loffredo told Serafina about his evening with Valois.
“We went in search of the man that accompanied Elena the night of the opening. You gave it to me, an address on the Rue d’Assas. And when I looked to find it on the map, I noticed it was next door to a monastery.”
“You talk of Etienne Gaston.”
He nodded. “His home is directly in back of the Rue Cassette, near the spot where the murdered woman was found. I could imagine someone carrying the body through their gardens, out the back gate and dumping it onto the Rue Cassette.”
“And have the police begun to question him?”
“Not really. He and Valois exchanged polite conversation, that’s all.”
Serafina told him she’d spoken to Gaston. “He was the man last seen with Elena by her friends, and to tell you the truth, I’m not sure about him. He loves Elena, or at least had a passionate affair with her, but she toyed with him and her behavior inflamed his fury. I could see him killing her in a jealous rage. He had motive, means, and opportunity. And yet…” She told him of the couple’s intimacy on the night of the murder, Elena’s disappearance, Gaston’s walking the streets of Paris to assuage his turmoil. “He saw the murdered woman in the Rue Cassette, told me he’d bent over her body to make sure she was not Elena.”
“His means?” he asked.
She told him about the revolver he said was missing from his desk. “And as yet, the police do nothing.”
“Not surprising. He’s an important scholar. If the crime had been committed in Oltramari, he would not be questioned at all.”
“But then, neither would you,” Serafina said.
“So why are you unsure about him? You think he may have murdered the woman in a state of madness, thinking she was Elena?”
“It’s possible.” She told Loffredo about seeing Elena’s dress in the storefront of a nettoyage a sec on the Rue Cassette, of learning that Gaston had taken the garment there to be cleaned. “And he lied to me about that, and about how long he and Elena were together.”
Loffredo brushed a hand over his chin.
They sat in silence, gazing at one another.
“What do you think happened to Elena? You must have seen her change. Think back on the first time she left for Paris. All of a sudden she decides to leave Oltramari. Had she been talking about it for some time? Did she take a trip and when she returned? Did she seem wistful and then leave and never come back?”
He planted a kiss on Serafina’s cheek. “Why do you want to know? Why all of a sudden?”
“It’s important, a very important question, something I need to know in order to understand what happened to Elena. I’m on the brink of putting it all together, but I’ve neglected a very important piece-her moods.”
“Well…” He thought for a moment. “Hard to remember, it was so long ago. Elena was always hard to pin down. She was a selfish woman.”
“Is a selfish woman,” Serafina corrected.
He nodded, smiling a little wistfully, she thought.
He continued. “She is petulant. Moody. I never knew what her reactions would be to anything, where her mind, her head would be. Trust me, she always was a surprise. I mean, always. Her father, you know, her father tried to capture her mind, mold her character.”
“To a point.”
“Yes, he tried to a point. Elena was spoiled. And now I understand what spoiled means. Her parents ruined her life,” he said.
“In a sense, they killed her,” Serafina said.
They were silent for a time.
“But her father did try to involve her in his business. This was long before I met her-he told me the story. And she was making progress understanding millinery, but all of a sudden one day she left the store and didn’t return. Never. He asked her why, and she had no reply, barely remembered working for him at the shop. He said he’d furnished an office for her where she spent a good deal of time learning about the business and fabrics and meeting their suppliers and working with the designers. But suddenly she became a different person. She decided that millinery wasn’t for her and hadn’t bothered to tell him.”
Arcangelo listened, his attention unflagging.
Loffredo turned to him. “Have you ever met such a person?”
“Yes. My grandmother. We had to move her to a hospital, I don’t know if La Signura remembers, but we lived in our own home and all of a sudden she thought she was one of La Signura’s women and she asked La Signura for better clothes. She said she needed a fancier nightgown. She became belligerent. We were embarrassed. Finally we had to bring her to Santa Maria, the hospital the sisters ran, you know the one I mean. But she was losing her mind. That’s what Papa said.”