Arcangelo looked at Teo and smiled.
“I want them to look for our shadowy friends. We still need to determine who’s following us and why.”
“We’ve been through this. I thought you figured they were Busacca’s men,” Rosa said.
“But I’ve got to make sure.”
Teo turned his moon face to Serafina. Some of the chocolate dessert he’d eaten on the train had smeared onto his shirt. She wondered what people in the hotel lobby would think of their group.
They turned into a large square, Serafina swaying with the motion.
“That’s our hotel?” Arcangelo pulled at his sleeves.
The Hotel du Louvre was a large presence lit from within. It looked more like a city than a hotel and faced a large square choked with hundreds of horse-drawn vehicles. Pedestrians called to one another, disappeared into the dark, or gathered around tour guides. Some hailed fiacres and voitures de remise. Men hawked newspapers. Women sold flowers.
In contrast with the surrounding panache, Serafina’s group were weary from a seventy-six-hour journey. Grit from the train had seeped into their clothes, and Serafina thought she heard the concierge sniff as he handed her the keys. As she signed the register, she looked at Carmela blinking in the splendor, at Tessa leaning against Rosa, her eyes barely open, at Teo, nodding his head into a book pretending not to be exhausted or impressed by the surroundings. Arcangelo yanked at the cuffs of his sleeves.
“May I take your knapsack and show you to your room?” a bellboy asked Teo in schoolbook Italian.
Normally quick with a reply, Teo was silent, absorbed in a new world decorated in the style of Louis Quinze. He clutched his book. His eyes were giant figs.
Instead of taking the long and impressive staircase, they rode to the eighth floor in a contrivance called a lift. Their rooms faced the front, seven separate chambers furnished in French rococo with a view of the Place du Palais Royal and beyond it, the Jardin des Tuileries. Each room had its own maid curtseying in front of the door, and inside, gilt and marble inlay, a rock crystal chandelier suspended from the ceiling, a large bedroom and a water closet with porcelain bathtub, hot-running water, and a pile of soft towels. Lush. Intimidating.
Serafina smelled heat pouring in from the floor vents of her corner room. She breathed in moist air when she opened doors leading to a balcony overlooking the Place du Palais Royal. In the near distance, the Tuileries were silent and dark except for the gas lamps which threw pools of light far into the park. She watched the people on the ground below, some walking, others embracing, still others getting into cabs. All seemed carefree, full of energy and laughter.
While Gesuzza sat in a far corner of Serafina’s suite, the chambermaid rolled down the damask bedspread. Carmela and Rosa admired the silk sheets. Tessa, Teo and Arcangelo huddled together, reluctant to go to their own rooms.
“In two days you’ll be used to all this luxury,” Serafina said. “And in two weeks you’ll be speaking the language like natives.”
“Can we order breakfast in our rooms?” Tessa asked.
“Anything you want.”
The three looked at one another, whispering.
There was a knock on the door. Giulia and two of her assistants bustled in, lugging several dresses from the House of Grinaldi for Carmela and two evening gowns for Serafina. For a moment it seemed like home with all the flying hands, the hugs, the kisses, the exclamations. Then Carmela took Giulia and her friends to her room so she could try on her new wardrobe, and Rosa went with Gesuzza to supervise the unpacking.
“Over here,” Tessa said, motioning to Arcangelo and Teo. “Take a look at the square.”
Teo corrected her. “You mean piazza.”
“No, she means place. It’s the Place du Palais Royal,” Serafina said to the empty room.
Lulled by the sudden quiet and the cool breeze from the open balcony doors, Serafina sank into the comfort of a well-padded chair, one which, for a change, did not roll or sway. She pulled out her notebook and after flipping back and forth through the pages, wrote a few lines summarizing the journey, underlining their encounters with the men who followed them. She thought them harmless and without sense, but annoying. She may have dozed until Rosa’s skirt brushed by her.
The madam waddled over to the French doors leading to the balcony. Visoring her eyes she said, “Look at all the gas lamps and the traffic, my girl.”
Teo, Arcangelo, and Tessa continued to gaze at the square below, bustling with more carriages and horse-drawn vehicles than they’d seen in one place, ever, even in Palermo. But the flow of traffic was different here, Teo pointed out, more orderly.
“Tonight we tour and eat,” Serafina said, closing her notebook. “Tomorrow we work.” She thought they’d have plenty of time to visit museums and exhibits after she dispensed with Elena’s killer.
“Not all of us. Remember Tessa is on holiday.”
Tessa shook her head. “I’m here to work with Teo and Arcangelo. I’m one of them, remember?”
“We need her,” Teo said.
In a few minutes, waiters arrived with trays carrying food steaming under glass and silver domes. They arranged it on a long dining table in the middle of the room.
“This is a light supper, Madame, as you so wished. You do not wish to dine in one of the restaurants?” a waiter asked in Italian, his dialect barely intelligible.
“Not tonight. I hope this a good sampling of the menu,” Rosa said.
“Yes, Madame.”
“Enough for all of us? We’re ten with our visitors and we’re famished. And there’d better be dessert.”
“But of course, Madame, let me show you.” He picked up each lid as he explained the dish in detail. “A selection from the chef’s kitchen-escargots marinated in wine.” He plunked down the lid and it made a soft metallic bong as he picked up another. “A dish of shallots in a light cream sauce, some fresh legumes, and a surprise for you, caviar mixed with pine nuts and basil oil-very, how shall I say, Mediterranee to suit your palette-sweetbread and tongue of veal, cream of chestnut with a duck foie gras, and a specialty, stewed figs and sardines.” He paused, frowning at Rosa’s wrinkled nose. “The soup is a beef and onion consomme topped with toasted bread and Gruyere. And we have six bottles of red wine from the Medoc and four bottles of chilled white from Chablis.” The waiter folded his hands over his ample stomach, his bulging eyes on Rosa. “And if that will be all, Madame…”
“No dolci?”
“When you ring for them, Madame, we will bring the desserts and cafe-creme brulee flambee, profiteroles smothered in chocolate, crepes flambeed with a liqueur, chocolate cake with creme caramel glacee.” The waiter’s face was red, the tips of his mustache turned down. He ran a hand over his forehead and blew out air from rounded cheeks. “Whatever else you need, Madame, to make your mouth water, you have only to ask.” The waiter winked at Rosa who beamed and spoke to him in broken French, asking for cafe and dessert to be brought up in thirty-five minutes. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out some bills and pressed them into his hand.
Watching this transaction, Serafina said, “Surprising, your French is so good, I didn’t know.”
Rosa shrugged. “All the trips to Paris when I was young. The language returns.”
Chapter 8: Sophie de Masson
Carmela looked at herself in the glass. She was clothed in a simple day dress of silk brocade in a deep French blue with overskirts in a lighter fabric gathered in the back to form a bustle, one of the garments her sister had given her last night. She adjusted the small hat she wore to a slight angle. The hat was a simple one, her favorite; she’d made it herself, a black pillbox with a stiff veil and tall, wafting feathers which she hoped added to her height. She worked it up and down, tilting it slightly on her head and angling the feathers just so. Resourceful with the few tools he’d brought with him, Teo had polished her boots to a high shine earlier that morning. Carmela put on her gloves and turned from the mirror. “How do I look?”