6

SARAH COULD SEE HOW MUCH MALLOY WANTED HER OUT of there. He hated involving her in murder investigations. How many times had they both vowed she’d never be involved again? She almost wished she could oblige him this time, but with the poor girl sobbing in her arms, she couldn’t possibly walk out, not even if it meant protecting her mother from scandal. In point of fact, her mother didn’t look like she was all too eager to leave either.

“There, now,” Mrs. Decker was saying soothingly. “Crying isn’t going to help anything. Why don’t you come back inside here with us.”

“You won’t leave me alone?” Madame said, looking more like the young girl that she was than the sophisticated spiritualist she’d pretended to be.

“Absolutely not,” Sarah assured her, pretending not to notice the face Malloy made when she said it. She turned the girl and walked her back into the parlor, her mother close behind. When the doors were safely shut behind them, Sarah seated the girl on one of the sofas and sat down beside her. “Can I get you something? Some tea?”

“No, no,” Madame said quickly. “I… What will they do with Nicola?”

“Who’s this Nicola?” Mrs. Decker asked, taking a seat in the chair beside the sofa.

“He is my fidanzato,” she said. “We are to be married. I am not sure of the word…”

“Fiancé?” Sarah supplied.

“Yes,” she said. Her remarkable eyes shone with unshed tears.

“But why would he want to kill Mrs. Gittings?” Sarah asked.

“He would not,” Madame assured her. “He would not want to kill anyone, but the police will accuse him, and because he is poor, no one will believe him, and he will hang-” Her voice caught on another sob.

“Slow down!” Sarah cried. “You’re getting way ahead of yourself. I promise you, Detective Malloy won’t arrest him if he’s innocent.”

“How can you know? He is the police!” Madame reminded her tragically.

She was right, of course. The New York Police were notorious for arresting whoever might be handy, with no regard for what the truth might be. Unless someone paid them a “reward” to find the real culprit, anyone might be charged and convicted of a crime. This Nicola sounded like someone who could easily fall into that category. “Mr. Malloy is a friend of mine,” Sarah said. “That’s why my mother insisted that he be called in to investigate.”

“You know a policeman?” Madame asked, staring at Sarah and her mother in amazement. People like Mrs. Decker did not know policemen.

“Yes, we do,” Mrs. Decker confirmed. “Mr. Malloy will make sure that the real killer is found and punished.”

Sarah hoped he would be able to do this. Right now, she knew too little of what had transpired here to be sure. “Can you tell me what happened? The policeman who came to get me didn’t know very much except that Mrs. Gittings had been stabbed.”

Madame straightened, looking back at Sarah with some apprehension. “I do not know what happened,” she said rather stiffly. “I was… Yellow Feather was there. I was in a trance. The first thing I knew was Mrs. Burke was screaming that Mrs. Gittings had fainted.”

Sarah wanted to ask her a question, but her mother jumped in before she could.

“It was horrible, Sarah. Yellow Feather was trying to contact Maggie, but there were a lot of spirits there today, and they were all talking at once. He couldn’t hear what she was saying. He started shouting, trying to quiet them down, and then everyone else starting talking at once.”

“The spirits?” Sarah asked in confusion.

“No, of course not. Everyone in the room. They all wanted to ask questions, so they started shouting, trying to make themselves heard. They were extremely rude,” she added, a bit outraged. “I couldn’t understand a thing.”

“When was Mrs. Gittings stabbed?” Sarah asked. She glanced at Madame Serafina, but she was studying her hands where they were folded in her lap.

Her mother had to think about it. “That’s just it, we don’t know exactly when she was stabbed. She didn’t scream or anything, so far as I heard, which now seems very strange. Wouldn’t you scream or at least cry out if someone stabbed you? The first hint we had that something was wrong was when Kathy… Mrs. Burke, she started screaming.”

“Did she see Mrs. Gittings get stabbed?”

“Oh, no,” her mother assured her. “None of us did. The room was dark, just the way it was at the séance you attended, dear.”

Sarah nodded, remembering how she hadn’t been able to see a thing in the pitch-dark room. “Were you holding hands?”

“Yes, just the way we did that other time. Everyone was holding someone else’s hands or, rather, their wrists. So of course we would have known if anyone at the table had let go to… Well, you know. Then Kathy… Mrs. Burke started to scream that Mrs. Gittings had fainted. That’s what she thought, of course.”

“Why did she think that?”

“Because she fell out of her chair, and naturally, she wouldn’t assume the woman had died, at least not at first. Mrs. Burke said she fell against her. She was quite hysterical when she realized the woman was actually dead.”

“I’m sure she was,” Sarah said. “When did you realize that?”

“As soon as someone opened the door, and we got a good look at her. The knife… Well, we all saw it sticking out of her back.” Suddenly, her mother looked a bit pale.

Sarah reached over and took her hand. “I’m so sorry you had to go through this.”

“Not your fault,” her mother reminded her sheepishly. “You made me promise not to come back here, didn’t you.”

“I’ll say I told you so later,” she promised in return and turned back to Madame Serafina. “Could anyone else have gotten into the room?”

“Oh, no,” Mrs. Decker answered for her. “Remember, we would have seen if someone had opened the door. I’m sure no one else could have come in.”

Sarah nodded, recalling quite clearly. That meant someone at the table must have killed the woman, although that didn’t really seem possible. Fortunately, figuring out how it had happened was Malloy’s job. She might be able to help him along, though. “Do you have any idea why someone would want to kill Mrs. Gittings?” she asked the girl.

Madame Serafina looked up, her expression guarded. “No, none at all.”

“What do you know about her?” Sarah asked. “Does she have any family? I suppose someone should send for them, if they haven’t already.”

“No, she has no family,” Madame said quickly.

“That must be why she spent so much time here,” Mrs. Decker said. “Mrs. Burke said she attended all the séances.”

But Sarah was still looking at the girl. She was hiding something. “Madame,” she said kindly. “What do you know about her? You have to tell us everything so we can help you,” she added, not sure if it was true but knowing it would work.

“Mrs. Gittings is…” The girl looked uncertainly at Mrs. Decker, then back at Sarah again. Her dark eyes looked even darker. “This is her house. She… finds people to come here, and she takes the money.”

“Are you saying that she’s your manager?” Sarah asked in surprise.

“Yes, that is it. She is my manager,” she said, grateful for the suggestion. “She takes care of everything for me so I do not have to worry.” This sounded like something Mrs. Gittings would have told her.

Sarah looked at her mother, who gave her a small shake of the head to indicate she’d had no idea. Sarah wondered briefly if Malloy knew this yet. “So you live here with her and… and who else?”

“Nicola,” she admitted reluctantly. “And the Professor.”

“How did you get involved with her in the first place?” Sarah asked, excusing her nosiness with the certainty that any information she could get about Mrs. Gittings might help identify her killer.

“She found me,” the girl said, obviously choosing her words carefully. “I was telling fortunes. I told her fortune one day, and she said I had a gift. She said I was wasting my talent, and she could help me. She said I could be rich.”