She lifted her chin in defiance. “Yes.”
Frank glanced meaningfully at Mrs. Decker.
“Not Mrs. Decker,” she amended quickly. “She was new, and Mrs. Gittings had not started trying to get money from her yet.”
“Mrs. Brandt,” Frank said. “You and Mrs. Decker should leave. The press will be getting wind of this any minute now, and when they do… Well, you know what will happen.”
Sarah knew only too well. “Mother,” she began, but Madame Serafina interrupted her.
“Please, do not go,” Serafina begged Sarah. She seemed genuinely frightened.
“Mr. Malloy won’t hurt you, child,” Mrs. Decker assured her.
“He has to arrest someone for this,” Serafina pointed out, “and Nicola is gone. Please, stay with me!”
Sarah shrugged helplessly, and Frank sighed in defeat. He turned one of the armchairs to face the sofa and sat down, wishing he could put his feet up. “All right, tell me why you think these other people wanted to kill Mrs. Gittings.”
The girl sat back down, her expression wary. She was a pretty little thing, he noticed, and those eyes, they could look right through you. She was trying to look through him right now. He gave her no encouragement.
“Mrs. Gittings charged a lot of money for the seances, but she said…” She glanced at Mrs. Decker uneasily and then went on. “She said that was just the beginning. She said these people had so much money that they would not miss a little bit more, so she figured out ways to get more.”
“How did she do that?” Frank asked with interest. He’d known the seance was a confidence game, but he hadn’t imagined there was more to it than just taking money to let people talk to their dead relatives.
“She would do different things for different people. She would find out things about them and then figure out the best way to get their money.”
“Was she getting money from all the other people who were here today?” Sarah asked.
Frank gave her a glare designed to silence her, but she didn’t even notice.
“Yes, she had a plan for each of them.”
“What was she doing?” Frank asked before Sarah could.
Plainly, Serafina hated to reveal these secrets. She looked down to where her hands were twisting in her lap.
“It’s all right,” Mrs. Decker said, putting an arm around her. “It’s not your fault.”
Frank wasn’t so sure about that, but he didn’t say so. No reason to discourage the girl from talking. “What was she doing to Mrs. Burke?”
“Mrs. Burke did not have as much money as Mrs. Gittings hoped,” Serafina replied. “At least she could not get any from her husband after the first few times. He did not like her going to seances, and he refused to give her any more money for them, not even to pay for the regular sittings.”
“But she was here every week,” Mrs. Decker said. “How was she paying for it?”
“She was… selling things. Jewelry, I think,” she admitted reluctantly.
Sarah’s eyes grew wide, and her expression told Frank she knew something about this. She opened her mouth to say it, but Frank gave her a quick shake of the head. He didn’t want to interrupt the girl.
“To raise money so she could keep coming to the seances,” Frank guessed.
“Yes, and Mrs. Gittings would arrange private sittings for her, too, when she could pay for them. But she was getting frightened, Mrs. Burke, I mean. She was afraid her husband would find out what she was doing. He would have been very angry.”
“He most certainly would,” Mrs. Decker confirmed grimly.
“Mrs. Burke had an argument with Mrs. Gittings last week,” Serafina said. “She thought Mrs. Gittings was charging her too much for the sittings, and she said she had no more jewelry to sell.”
“Why didn’t she just stop coming?” Frank asked quite reasonably, or so he thought.
“She could not,” Serafina told him. “That is the secret, you see. I only tell them just enough so they must come back again to hear the rest.”
“And the next time, you tell them a little more and then a little more,” Frank guessed.
“Yes, that is it,” she said, relieved that he understood. She turned to Mrs. Decker. “I am sorry, but that is what she made me do.”
Mrs. Decker looked too shocked to reply, but Serafina didn’t seem to notice.
“I guess Mrs. Gittings wouldn’t lower the price for Mrs. Burke,” Frank said, drawing the girl’s attention back to him.
“Oh, no. In fact, she raised it. Mrs. Burke was furious.”
“I’m sure she was,” Mrs. Decker said, outraged on the other woman’s behalf.
“I had no part in this, you understand,” the girl said, and Frank assured her that he did.
“So what about Cunningham and Sharpe?” he asked.
“Albert, Mr. Cunningham, he was in love with me,” she admitted a little reluctantly.
Frank had seen that clearly. “Was she charging him for that?” he asked sarcastically.
She stiffened. “I am not for sale, Mr. Malloy.”
“I’m sure Mr. Malloy didn’t mean that,” Sarah said, giving him a black look.
“No, I didn’t,” Frank agreed. “I mean, was she charging him more to come back because she knew he was in love with you?”
“No, she… He had inherited a lot of money when his father died last year, but he didn’t know much about business. Mrs. Gittings and the Professor arranged for him to invest some of it with a friend of theirs.”
This was getting more interesting now. “Invest? What do you mean by that?”
Serafina’s lovely mouth thinned down with disgust. “I told him… I mean, Yellow Feather told him about some investments he should make. He would do anything his father told him to do, so I told him that his father wanted him to make these investments.”
“But this friend was a fake, wasn’t he?” Frank guessed.
“I do not know what they did,” Serafina claimed. “All I know is that Mr. Cunningham had lost a lot of money, and Mrs. Gittings said that Yellow Feather had to tell him to invest even more.”
Frank could see Sarah’s expression out of the corner of his eye. She looked as if she was about to explode. She knew things Frank needed to know, but at least she understood the importance of staying quiet at this moment. “Do you think he’d figured out that Mrs. Gittings was cheating him?”
“I do not know, but he was getting very frightened, too. Mrs. Gittings had tried to talk to him, to convince him everything would be all right, but he was angry with her, I know.”
“That leaves Mr. Sharpe,” Frank recalled. “Is he in love with you, too?”
Serafina folded her hands primly. “You will have to ask him about that,” she said.
“Why was he angry with Mrs. Gittings, then?”
“Because he… he wanted to be my sponsor.”
“What does that mean?” Frank asked, thinking he knew but not wanting to make a mistake about it.
“He wanted to buy me a house and support me so I did not have to see other clients. He wanted me all to himself, you see.”
“To be his mistress?” Sarah said before Frank could figure out how to ask it.
“Oh, no,” Serafina assured her. “He just… He believes so strongly, you see. He thought it was wrong that I had to charge people money. He said he would take care of me so I could use my gifts to… to help people.”
Frank thought that sounded a little fishy, but he let it pass, for now. “I don’t suppose Mrs. Gittings liked that idea much.”
“Oh, no,” the girl said. “But you see, he did not know she was already my sponsor, not at first. He came to me and made me this offer, and I had to tell him that… Well, that she would never allow it.”
“So he knew Mrs. Gittings was never going to let you go,” Frank said.
“Yes,” she agreed eagerly. “So you see, all of them had a reason to kill her.”
Of course, Frank just had her word for it, and he was pretty sure none of these very rich, powerful people would confirm any of this, especially if it implicated them in a murder. He risked a glance at Sarah, and he could see she also understood the situation perfectly. Justice wasn’t blind where rich people were concerned. She looked out for them very carefully and overlooked much more.
“But dear,” Mrs. Decker was saying, “none of them could have killed Mrs. Gittings. We were all holding each
