Victoria Thompson: Murder On Waverly Place

“That’s right, you were afraid of her,” Malloy went on, “so you took the easy way out and stabbed her when she was helpless so you could take all the money Serafina made for yourself-”

“Stealing from a defenseless girl!” Cunningham cried, outraged.

“She’s not defenseless!” the Professor snarled. “And I wasn’t afraid of Lucille!”

“Then why did you kill her?” Malloy asked curiously.

“Because she was causing too much trouble!” he said, then caught himself, realizing what he had done.

“Too much trouble,” Malloy repeated thoughtfully, and glanced around at the people assembled there. “You mean the way she was trying to get extra money from everyone here? By offering to sell Serafina to Cunningham so he’d fall for that phony investment scheme she arranged?”

“What?” Cunningham roared.

“And by frightening Mrs. Burke into paying more and more for the séances, and-”

“She couldn’t be satisfied!” the Professor moaned. “We had a perfect setup here, but she always wanted more and more. I told her she was going to ruin everything, but she wouldn’t listen! She just wouldn’t listen!”

“But why take the chance of killing her like that?” Malloy asked.

The Professor’s eyes narrowed, and he looked as if he wanted to slip a knife into Malloy. “Because a normal policeman wouldn’t have investigated at all, not with all these important people involved, and if he did, he would have been satisfied to charge Nicola with it and be done.”

Sarah realized with a start that he was absolutely right. “But weren’t you afraid killing Mrs. Gittings would frighten clients away?” Sarah asked.

He just glared at Sarah, but Maeve said, “You could always move to another city, couldn’t you, Professor? Just like you did when you killed the Old Gentleman?”

He glared at her venomously. “My only mistake was coming back.”

THAT NIGHT, AFTER CATHERINE WAS SAFELY IN BED, SARAH, Maeve, and Malloy told Mrs. Ellsworth the story of the séance as they sat around Sarah’s kitchen table. Sarah’s mother had felt she must go home so her husband wouldn’t wonder where she had spent her day. Serafina and Nicola were enjoying a reunion at the house on Waverly Place.

Everyone was particularly fascinated by the light that Malloy had given Maeve to use and the way she had turned it on in the dark room just in time to catch the killer.

“I thought I broke it when I hit the Professor with it,” Maeve said as Malloy demonstrated the device for them.

“No, it just went out by itself. The power doesn’t last too long at a time, so you only get a short flash of light each time you turn it on,” he explained. “Then the battery has to rest before it will light again. That’s why they call them flashlights.”

“You used it at just the right moment,” Sarah said.

“I was afraid it might be too soon, but when Nicola said someone was going to kill Serafina, I couldn’t wait.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Mrs. Ellsworth said, laying her hand over Maeve’s. “If anything had happened to you…” She gave a little shudder.

“I didn’t think the Professor recognized me, or I wouldn’t have taken a chance.”

“He kept looking at you,” Malloy recalled. “But he said he was sure you were somebody’s maid, so I thought he just didn’t approve of you being there. If I’d suspected the truth, I never would’ve let you go in that room.”

Maeve smiled sweetly. “I know.”

“How did that boy Nicola get in the cabinet?” Mrs. Ellsworth asked. “After he escaped, I thought we’d never see him again.”

“That’s something Serafina didn’t explain,” Sarah said, “but I have a feeling he’d been watching the house, and he would have known she was back.”

“While we were waiting for everybody to get there, she disappeared for a few minutes, into the kitchen,” Malloy said. “She told me she was going to unlock the back door for us.”

“She must have contacted Nicola then,” Sarah guessed. “And he could have sneaked into the cabinet then, too.”

“I noticed she looked a little… excited,” he said, choosing his word carefully, “when she came back. I thought it was just because of the séance, but if she saw Nicola, that would explain it.”

“It would have to, since he wasn’t really a ghost,” Sarah said with a grin.

“And speaking of ghosts, I’m so sorry about your grandfather, dear,” Mrs. Ellsworth said to Maeve. “But how interesting that the spirits knew the Professor had killed him.”

“I don’t think the spirits did know that,” Maeve said.

“But I thought you said-”

“No, I never told anyone that until after the séance was over,” Maeve reminded them all. “All that the spirits knew was that my grandfather had played the Old Gentleman in the Green Goods Game and that he’d been murdered.”

“Just what you’d told me,” Sarah recalled.

“And Serafina,” Malloy guessed.

“No, Serafina had already gone to bed that night,” Sarah said. “It was just Maeve and me.”

“So it really was the spirits,” Mrs. Ellsworth said in wonder.

“I don’t think so,” Maeve said with a grin. “I should have remembered, because I’ve done it enough times myself.” She pointed toward the ceiling, and they all looked up to see the grating that allowed the heat from the kitchen to pass into the bedroom upstairs. And which also allowed conversations to be overheard.

“So she was listening to your conversation,” Mrs. Ellsworth said, disappointed. “I was so hoping it was really the spirits.”

“Serafina will never admit it, but I think we can explain just about everything that happened,” Sarah said with some satisfaction.

“We know the music and the baby crying were records Nicola played on the gramophone,” Malloy said, starting to tick them off on his fingers.

“I’ve been thinking about the way we all smelled roses that first time,” Sarah said. “I think Mrs. Gittings may have had some cologne that she sprinkled on the table. She could have done that if she had one hand free.”

“But she did know about your sister,” Mrs. Ellsworth reminded Sarah.

“I thought so then, but Maeve pointed out that practically every family has had a baby die at one time or another. When the baby cried, my mother was the one who said it must be Maggie’s baby.”

“But didn’t Serafina know the first time she saw Mrs. Decker that she’d lost a daughter?” Mrs. Ellsworth reminded her.

“Mrs. Burke probably told her that,” Maeve said. “I’d guess Mrs. Gittings was trying to get her to think of friends who had a loved one they’d want to contact, and she remembered Mrs. Decker had a daughter who died young.”

“So you see, we can explain all of Serafina’s powers,” Sarah said.

Mrs. Ellsworth smiled mysteriously. “Perhaps not all of them, dear. Remember Serafina told me where I would find my late husband’s watch?”

“That’s right,” Maeve remembered. “Didn’t she say it would be something with the letter B?”

“Yes, she did,” Mrs. Ellsworth reported. “And that’s just where I found it, hidden in the fireplace.”

“Fireplace doesn’t start with a B,” Sarah pointed out skeptically.

“No, it doesn’t,” Mrs. Ellsworth agreed with some satisfaction of her own, “but it was behind a loose brick , just where my husband had left it.”

IHAD A WONDERFUL TIME RESEARCHING SÉANCES FOR this book. I found lots of interesting information about how to do “cold readings,” which means how to make people think you know things about them when you really don’t. What I learned is that most people are eager to help a self-professed psychic and will try to find meaning in anything that is said, no matter how vague or meaningless. This is called “subjective validation,” which is the process of validating words, initials, statements, or signs as accurate because one is able to find them personally meaningful and significant. If you go back and read Serafina’s “readings,” you will find that the subjects were the ones who found meaning in them and that she gave them few, if any, real facts. I’m afraid I’m even more of a skeptic since researching the subject than I was before, but I do still enjoy getting my Tarot cards read.