Victoria Thompson - Murder On Waverly Place

“Absolutely not!” Cunningham tried, but not very convincingly.

“How much did she want for her?” Frank asked with interest.

“A gentleman never discusses-” he tried, but Frank interrupted his feeble outrage.

“More than your allowance would cover, I’d guess,” Frank continued relentlessly. “And I already know you won’t get your full inheritance until you’re twenty-five. Where were you going to get the money, Cunningham?”

While Cunningham sputtered incoherently, Frank pretended to consult his notes.

“Oh, that’s right,” he recalled. “You were going to make some investments. That’s what you were asking your father about at the séances, wasn’t it?”

“Who told you that?” Cunningham demanded.

“Just about everybody,” Frank lied. “They all heard the questions you asked your father.”

“I forbid you to discuss my father,” Cunningham tried.

“All right,” Frank said obligingly. “Let’s talk about those investments. I understand they weren’t very successful.”

“That’s none of your business!”

“But they weren’t, were they? And I understand you lost a lot of money. Not what your father would have wanted for you, I’m sure. Do you really think your father would have given you such bad advice?” Frank asked.

The question surprised Cunningham. He stared at Frank in almost comic amazement. “I… I never thought of that.”

“Well, think about it. What do you know about these men you invested with?”

Cunningham blinked. “I… Nothing, really.”

“How did you meet them?”

“They… they approached me one evening at… at a gentlemen’s club.”

Frank figured the men at this club rarely acted like gentlemen. “Why did you trust them?”

He was rubbing his temples again. “Because my father had told me… I mean, his spirit had told me I would meet someone who would offer me an opportunity. Then the next night, I met them. It seemed… It seemed like fate!”

Frank nodded sagely. “Let me guess, they told you about this business opportunity, and you offered to invest, but they refused to take your money.”

Cunningham was gaping at him again. “Yes, that’s exactly what happened! How did you know? I couldn’t believe it! I had to practically beg them to let me invest. They said they didn’t think it was right to take my money in such a risky venture, but I knew it wasn’t a risk at all.”

“Except it was.”

“What?” he asked stupidly.

“It was a risk, because you lost all your money.”

Cunningham still seemed confused by this. “But I did exactly what my father had told me to do. It shouldn’t have worked out like that.”

“Have you ever seen these men again?”

“No, I haven’t,” he said in renewed surprise. “Not since they told me the venture failed. I suppose they were embarrassed.”

Frank let that pass. “So there you were, still wanting the girl-”

“She’s not just a girl ,” Cunningham protested. “Stop calling her that!”

“Madame Serafina then,” Frank conceded. “You still wanted her, but you’d lost all your money, and your mother wouldn’t give you any more, and you couldn’t hope to be able to pay Mrs. Gittings what she wanted. What were you going to do?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do,” Frank insisted. “What were you going to do?”

Cunningham was starting to look a little sick. “I… I needed to speak with my father again, to find out what went wrong. I needed his advice.”

“Did he give you advice when he was alive?” Frank asked with interest.

This time, Cunningham’s face grew brick red. “He never had time,” he admitted reluctantly.

Frank nodded. The boy had been ignored by his father and indulged by his mother. No wonder he was worthless. Six months after he came into his inheritance, the money would be gone.

Frank pretended to consider what he had been told. “So you had lost the money you invested, and you couldn’t pay Mrs. Gittings to let Madame Serafina go. What were you going to do?”

“I told you, I was going to ask my father!” he cried.

“But if Mrs. Gittings was dead, you wouldn’t need any money at all,” Frank pointed out.

“That’s ridiculous!”

“But it’s true, isn’t it? She wasn’t a very nice woman,” Frank reminded him. “Everyone said so.”

“I’m sure I never heard anyone say so,” Cunningham said righteously.

“But it was true. Did you know those men you invested with were working for her?”

He stiffened, and for an instant Frank wasn’t sure if he was surprised or just surprised Frank knew. “Why do you say that?” he asked.

“Because it’s true. She was operating a fake séance, so why wouldn’t she try to cheat people out of money in other ways?”

“Madame Serafina isn’t a fake!” he insisted.

“You’re sure of that?”

“Of course I am! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Do you have a lot of experience with spiritualism?”

“Well, yes, a bit,” he admitted.

“You’ve visited other spiritualists?”

“A few.”

“But they couldn’t help you?”

“They… Madame Serafina was different,” he decided. “She knows what’s inside of you. She knows what you’re thinking.”

“Did she know you were thinking of taking her as your mistress?”

Cunningham jumped to his feet. “How dare you!”

“I’m just trying to figure out what happened,” Frank said in apology. “Maybe she was insulted that you thought she would sell herself. Maybe she told you what Mrs. Gittings wanted you to hear so you’d lose all your money.”

“She’d never do that!”

“Are you sure?” Frank asked. “I’ve seen women do some pretty nasty things to men who insulted them.”

“I didn’t insult her! I would have married her if I could!”

“But your mother would never let you marry a girl like that, would she?”

Cunningham sank back down into his chair in defeat. “No, she wouldn’t.”

Frank let him consider his miserable situation for a few moments, and then he said, “Professor Rogers thinks that this Italian boy who worked at the house killed Mrs. Gittings.”

Cunningham scowled at him. “Then why are you here, bothering me?”

“Because I can’t prove it. Everybody says he wasn’t in the room and couldn’t have gotten in without somebody seeing him.”

“He couldn’t have gotten in without everybody seeing him,” Cunningham corrected him. “But what about that cabinet? Couldn’t he have been hiding in there and come out when the lights were out?”

Frank didn’t answer. “Everyone was holding hands around the table, weren’t they?”

Cunningham needed a few seconds to comprehend the sudden change of topic. “Yes, I already told you that,” he replied, suddenly wary.

“And if everybody was holding somebody’s hands, then none of them could have stabbed Mrs. Gittings.”

Cunningham waited, still not sure what Frank was getting at.

“But isn’t there a way that somebody could get one of his hands free?”

“What do you mean?” The color had faded from his face again.

“I mean there’s a trick that some spiritualists use. They get up to turn out the lights, for instance, and when they sit back down, they keep one hand free.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” he lied.

“Yes, you do,” Frank said. “Madame Serafina told me you do.”

His eyes widened again. “Why would she tell you that?”

“Because she wants me to think you killed Mrs. Gittings.”

“No, she doesn’t!” he cried. “I don’t believe it!”