Startled, Serafina stared at him, then at Loffredo. A volume passed between them in a second.
By this time Carmela, Rosa, and Tessa had returned and were listening to the conversation.
“So when one day she announced she had tickets to Paris and wanted to live there, I was surprised, but not astounded. This was Elena. I remember telling her I couldn’t possibly leave my practice and she told me that she didn’t expect me to live there with her, that she wanted to explore other paths. That’s how she put it, and in the next few minutes, she was gone. She had a small bag packed before she’d even talked to me. I looked out and saw the carriage waiting for her. She’d gotten the ticket on her own, and the first time she told me was when it was time to leave.”
“Left all her frocks behind?” Rosa asked.
“Everything. Her jewels, her clothes, her shoes, her purses, everything.”
“So departing suddenly for the Midi is something in keeping with her character?”
He nodded. “A sudden and total leaving. That’s in keeping with her character, if you can call it that. Not the painting part. I’ve never known her to be so intent on an art form. After all, being an artist involves years and years of study, of painting hours every day, hard labor, many skills must come together. It’s a unique way of seeing the world. And the artist’s vision and endless labor create and perfect a unique style. It’s work, hard work, endless work. Elena was not ever into work. So that aspect is new for her. She gets an idea and changes so rapidly. But now I think she’s become too enthralled with herself. She is her own caricature.”
“Let’s go before we’ve passed breakfast and missed yet another meal,” Rosa said.
“Place St. Eustache, driver.”
“This better not be a church,” Rosa said.
The drive took only a few minutes. In fact, they could have walked. And when they arrived, Serafina could not believe her eyes.
“These are the pavilions of Les Halles, the teeming heart of Paris,” Loffredo said.
“It looks like the teeming stomach of Paris to me,” Rosa said, a smile on her face.
“And if you’re interested in eating the freshest of foods, there are restaurants and cafes here where we may feast,” Loffredo said.
Serafina breathed in, smelling onions and vegetables, the earth, fish, meat, lilacs, lavender, the distillation of flowers from the south, the honest sweat of farmers and fishermen, whoever worked as vendors selling to the restauranteurs, the hospitals, the people of Paris. People were everywhere, men in berets with cigarettes dangling from their lips, young boys in shorts, women in long black skirts and homespun aprons, their hands swollen from work. They packed the streets around a rotund cast iron edifice in front of two other pavilions. Workers unloaded large covered horse carts, piling produce onto wagons pulled by men and even some women into the stalls. The stalls were filled with flowers, with great slabs of meat, with cheese, with fish perched on ice, their tails turned up with freshness. Horns honked. People yelled to one another, their voices swallowed up in the great volume of air. The sounds cascaded off of cast iron pillars. People stomped in every direction. Buyers swarmed around the stalls, the vendors weighing and bickering and wrapping the produce.
“You’ve eaten here?” Serafina yelled to Loffredo who was standing next to her.
“I come here to lose my worries after escorting Elena.”
They passed a small bar open to the street, a few tables scattered outside. Pedestrians skirted around them. At a table sat a man and woman, both disheveled, both bleary, quite drunk, the man especially. He had ragged hair and red and purple capillaries. He tried to stand but was unable. In their glasses was an opaque white liquid.
“Absinthe drinkers,” Loffredo said. “The ruin of many.”
Serafina could see the moisture in her daughter’s eyes.
Carmela looked at Loffredo as if seeing him for the first time. “I’ve misjudged you. Forgive me.”
“Please, don’t trouble yourself. I love your mother. You think I might take her from you. And I just might. I understand your fear.”
Rosa rolled her eyes. “Show us a restaurant before I faint. You know it so well, you pick it out.”
“We want to walk around,” Teo said. He and Arcangelo disappeared.
“If you lose us, you know the way back to the hotel,” Serafina called after them.
Loffredo took them to a bistro in the pavilion with starched tablecloths and waiters in long aprons holding round trays. They were seated in the front where Teo and Arcangelo had a better chance of finding them.
“Order what you want, it’s on me, but please consider the onion soup. You won’t have a better bowl,” Loffredo said.
“Sorry, I cannot let you pay,” Serafina said. “Let Busacca buy us dinner.”
They started with the soup, dipping crusty pieces of warm baguettes into the hot broth, loading them up with onion and cheese before savoring the rich flavor and slurping them into their mouths. Serafina said she was content with the soup and perhaps she would try one of the pigs feet. Loffredo and Tessa ordered the same. Rosa decided on a slab of beef smothered in fat, swimming in juices, and surrounded by potatoes, carrots, and onions. When they returned, Teo and Arcangelo ate sausage and sauerkraut after finishing a bowl of pea soup.
They rose to leave, tired and happy. Serafina could see the night sky disappearing, a smear of pale cerulean and rose madder in the east. She smelled the morning, heard the tired shouts of the vendors. Another day.
Serafina’s head ached. It was past noon. She’d had no cafe, and the others were not yet awake. It was not how she imagined being in Paris with Loffredo, sitting in the lobby of the Hotel du Louvre with him and talking about Gaston with Inspector Valois, repeating her words of last night.
When she was finished, Valois, who’d written everything down, said he’d send a few of his men to bring him in for questioning. “Perhaps today.”
Serafina nodded. “I know he prepares an important paper. He intends to address the Academie des Sciences on some matter or other. It sounded important and I have it in my notes somewhere, but you’ll forgive me, I’m not quite-”
“I took Madame Florio and her party to Les Halles last night,” Loffredo explained.
“After we’d spent the evening at the salon they call Les Mardistes,” Serafina said, and summarized what they’d learned there from Elena’s friends.
“When Carmela said she’d heard Elena was in the south of France, a painter’s response was ‘Who told you? Weren’t supposed to say anything.’ Carmela’s at the woman’s studio now to see if she might have Elena’s address.”
Valois made no reply. He rubbed his lapels and narrowed his gaze. Serafina noticed a tremor in his hand.
“But I called for you on another important matter. The order of exhumation has been issued by the court, a rabbi summoned, and the body is to be unearthed one week from tomorrow in Versailles. Because he examined the body, Dr. Melange will also accompany us. I’ve contacted Madame de Masson. She sent word that she and her two sons will be there.”
Serafina felt tired, not elated.
Valois seemed subdued.
There was a knock and Carmela entered. She threw her reticule on the bed and crossed her arms. “I traipsed all the way to Maitre Albert and that woman wasn’t there. This is the second time. How can she paint when he’s never in her studio? Impossible!” She turned and saw Valois. “Forgive me. I had no idea.”
“I’ve told the inspector we’re searching for Elena’s address in the south.”
“We have an old address in Arles, but Loffredo thinks she’s no longer there. In the past, she’s let an apartment.”
“Perhaps we may be able to help,” Valois said.
Chapter 31: Versailles
Their mood was somber. Dressed in black, they stood in the chill on one corner of Madame Sophie de Masson’s estate. The gates of a small cemetery were open. For centuries it had been the burial ground of the Parisian branch of the Busacca family. They were surrounded by formal French gardens, classically posed statues, and ornamental pools similar to those at the Palace of Versailles. Trails of mist hung low on the ground partially covering the grass, the walkways, the shrubs. The moisture seeped into her bones. Serafina’s feet were ice as she crunched them back and forth in the gravel. She heard birds calling to one another in the near distance.