Murder On Waverly Place

Mrs. Ellsworth patted her hand reassuringly. “Well, you’ve come to the right place. Mrs. Brandt is an expert at finding murderers.”

“She is?” Serafina exclaimed as Sarah winced.

“Oh, yes, she’s helped Detective Sergeant Malloy solve dozens of cases.”

“Not dozens,” Sarah protested, although sometimes it did seem like it. “Just a… a few.”

“Then you can help me,” Serafina said with relief. “The spirits have not deserted me at all. They have led me to you.”

Sarah took a seat at the table and passed the sugar bowl to her guests so they could sweeten their tea. “You’ll have to help me before I can help you,” she said. “You have to tell me everything you know about everyone involved. If we have any hope at all of saving Nicola, we must find the real killer.”

“Mrs. Brandt said your Nicola was playing a violin all through the seance, so he couldn’t be the killer,” Mrs. Ellsworth said.

“That is right, he was.”

“How do we know it wasn’t just one of the gramophone records?” Sarah challenged.

“Because we do not have the violin on a record,” Serafina replied. “We do not know what the spirits will say, so Nicola must listen and play music to suit what happens. We can go back to the house so you can see we have no such records. I promise, you will see this is true.”

“He could have been walking around the room in the dark, though, and stabbed Mrs. Gittings while he was playing,” Sarah tried.

“He never comes out of the cabinet,” Serafina insisted.

“That would be very difficult to prove,” Sarah argued.

“But playing a violin takes two hands,” Mrs. Ellsworth pointed out. “How could he hold a knife? And if the room was dark enough that they couldn’t see him, how could he see where Mrs. Gittings was to stab her?”

“Did everyone always sit in the same place at the table?” Sarah asked.

“No,” Serafina said. “I tell them where to sit each time, and she is right, he could not see Mrs. Gittings in the dark.”

But Sarah was pretty sure it would be easy enough to memorize the layout of the room, and if Serafina told people where to sit… Well, finding Mrs. Gittings would certainly be possible. That’s what Malloy would say, anyway.

The sound of running feet distracted them, and Catherine raced into the room to remind them it was time to cook supper. Maeve took charge of the kitchen, and all conversation about murder ceased in deference to Catherine’s tender years.

THE NEXT MORNING, FRANK HAD JUST ARRIVED AT POLICE Headquarters when he got an urgent message from Professor Rogers, asking him to return to the house. Frank was sure Nicola wouldn’t have shown his face there again, which was the only reason he could imagine that the Professor would call him back, but he made the trip down to Waverly Place just in case.

The Professor answered Frank’s knock and ushered him inside after looking around to see if anyone was lurking out on the street.

“The newspapermen were here for hours last night,” the Professor informed him as if he thought it was Frank’s fault.

“Did you tell them anything?”

“No, but the neighbors… I saw them asking people questions.”

“The story was in the evening editions,” Frank told him, “but they don’t have much of it right. If they don’t get wind of who the clients were, they’ll lose interest.”

The Professor sniffed in disdain.

“Is that why you sent for me?” Frank asked in annoyance. “To complain about the newspapermen?”

“No, I want to report a robbery.”

“A robbery? What was stolen?”

“Several thousand dollars,” the Professor reported. Plainly, he was furious and controlling it with great difficulty.

Frank studied him for a long moment. “Is this the money that Mrs. Gittings was holding for Serafina and Nicola?”

“It was all the money,” he said bitterly.

“Where did you keep it?”

“Locked in a safe.”

Frank remembered seeing a safe in the narrow space behind the false wall. “When did you find out it was missing?”

“This morning.”

Frank was growing increasingly irritated with the Professor’s miserly answers. “Show me the safe.”

“It’s in here,” he said, and as Frank expected, he led him to the narrow space behind the false wall.

The morning sun filtered through the curtain, showing the dust motes hanging in the stale air. Frank had noticed the safe in the far end of the space yesterday, but hadn’t given it any particular significance. Now the door hung open, and the safe was clearly empty.

“Is this how you found it?”

“No, it was locked.”

It had been closed when Frank saw it yesterday. “Why did you open it?”

“I… I thought I might need some money.”

Frank wondered idly if the Professor had decided to take the money and disappear himself, before Serafina could lay claim to it. “Who had the combination?”

“Just Mrs. Gittings and myself,” he said.

“Maybe she put the money someplace else,” Frank suggested, thinking she might have put it someplace the Professor couldn’t find it.

“No, it was all there yesterday, right before the seance,” he said. “I collected the fees from everyone and put them into the safe while Madame was greeting the guests, just like I always do, and everything was fine then.”

“Are you sure you locked it?”

“Of course,” the Professor snapped, losing his battle to control his anger. “Don’t you see what happened? That little rat stole it!”

“What little rat? You mean DiLoreto?”

“Of course I mean DiLoreto. Who else could have done it?”

“I thought he didn’t know the combination,” Frank reminded him.

“He’s a sneaky little bastard,” the Professor said through gritted teeth. “Who knows what he knew? Maybe he knows how to crack safes.”

Frank doubted the boy would have been working for a phony spiritualist if he knew how to crack safes, but he decided not to mention that to the Professor. He was already upset enough. “If DiLoreto stole this money… How much was it, again?”

“I don’t know exactly, but it was over five thousand dollars,” the Professor told him, seething at the very thought.

“I saw him right before he ran off,” Frank recalled, picturing the boy in his mind with his slim figure dressed in tightly fitting black clothes, which were ideally suited for slipping into and out of cabinets without catching on corners. “He wasn’t carrying anything, and he couldn’t have had that much money stuffed in his pockets.”

“He must have come back for it last night, while I was asleep. He has a key to the house.”

“That still doesn’t explain how he got into the safe.”

“I told you-”

“I know, he’s a safe cracker. Or maybe you left it unlocked.”

“I didn’t leave it unlocked, I tell you.”

“Have you searched the rest of the house? Just in case Mrs. Gittings put the money someplace else?” Frank prodded.