Chapter Two
As he followed Constance and Kellar upstairs, Solomon’s unease stemmed partly from a sort of fellow feeling for Montague, another man who had married out of his worldly class.
No matter how successful and admired Caterina di Ripoli had been, she performed on the stage for money, and that made her an unsuitable wife for a respectable man.
For some reason, this made Solomon feel just a little grubby for poking around the man’s grief.
And Kellar, taking advantage of the widower’s shock, was managing the business. Solomon did not like that either.
The doors in this house were all of the old-fashioned variety, with latches. Kellar walked straight to the second of these off the landing and opened it with familiarity.
The room smelled of roses.
It was quickly clear why. Although the curtains were drawn, there was easily enough light to see the large glass vase full of glorious red blooms that stood on the table at the center of the room. But Solomon’s eyes were quickly drawn to the four-poster, curtained bed opposite the window.
Caterina di Ripoli lay as though sleeping, her eyes closed, the quilt drawn up over her shoulders.
Kellar turned up the lamp by the bed. Solomon recognized her at once from the Covent Garden stage as well as from her portrait downstairs.
Her clear skin was of the slightly darker complexion seen more in the south of Italy and the Mediterranean in general, her features delicate and even.
The tragedy hit him afresh. That anyone so young and vital and talented should be struck down seemed utterly wrong.
And yet it happened every day, and to those much younger, too.
“May I see her hands?” Constance asked, reaching for the quilt.
Kellar was before her, drawing the covers down far enough to show the dead woman’s slender hands lying against her chest, palms down. A gold wedding ring adorned her left hand.
Constance lifted her right hand. The stiffness of death, rigor mortis, was already fading from her muscles, for it came easily.
Solomon knew she was looking for any signs of a struggle, but the palms and fingertips appeared as smooth as the backs of Caterina’s hands, and the nails were clean and shapely.
“Has the body been moved at all?” Solomon asked. “Or is this just how she was found? Were her hands in this position?”
“More or less,” Kellar said, “but the doctor examined her, so she may have been laid out like that later. You should speak to the maid who found her.”
Constance, no doubt remembering a previous case, drew up Caterina’s eyelid, looking for the tiny red dots that could be a sign of asphyxiation. There were certainly no marks on the slender throat revealed by the fine lawn nightgown.
She looked up at Kellar. “Do you want us to look at the rest of her?” she asked bluntly.
Something very like a spasm passed across Kellar’s face and vanished, though he stepped away from the bed and turned his back, walking quickly toward the roses.
Taking that as assent, Solomon raised the body in his arms, letting Constance look first beneath and between the two pillows on which Caterina’s head had lain, and then under the nightgown at the skin of her back.
Solomon laid her back on the pillows and drew back the covers.
Despite his usual dispassion in their investigations, Solomon looked away, relying on Constance to do the observing. It felt like a violation, and he wasn’t at all sure the widower downstairs had agreed to this in his unspecified permission.
At last, Constance spread the nightgown carefully back down and rearranged Caterina’s hands exactly where they had been. Solomon drew the covers back up.
Constance smoothed the lace-trimmed pillowcases on either side of the dead woman’s head. “I can’t see any marks on her at all, let alone any of violence.”
The bed was smooth, too, quite without the tangle that would have been created by a struggle for life.
“Will you look around?” Kellar asked, although it sounded more of a curt order than a request. At the same time, the plea in his eyes overcame Solomon’s reluctance.
Kellar cared.
While Solomon went toward the little bureau in the window embrasure, Constance began by looking under the spare two pillows on the bed.
He dealt quickly with Caterina’s correspondence, largely because there wasn’t a great deal.
Most of it was to do with singing engagements at theatres and private concerts.
She appeared to have been a shrewd businesswoman, and her English was fluent.
There was one unfinished letter in Italian, to an old friend in Rome, mentioning people he had never heard of, telling amusing stories of her life.
Her husband’s name was scattered across the page, and Solomon found no expression of discontent, let alone fear or concern.
“Do you really suspect Montague?” Solomon asked, tucking the letters away and moving to the lower drawers.
“You don’t?” Kellar returned. “Please don’t be misled by his maudlin talk of love at first sight and the perfect marriage. It was not.”
“In what way?” Solomon asked, rifling through the contents of the last drawer without much expectation. “He does not give the impression of a straying husband, and he is only three years married.”
“I did not say he strayed. But she did so.”
Both Solomon and Constance straightened and looked at Kellar.
“With whom?” Solomon asked.
He would not have been surprised if Kellar had answered, Me. It would have explained his almost proprietary attitude toward the dead woman.
“To my knowledge,” Kellar said, “a violinist. And I suspect there was someone before him, but I was not in the country then to observe. Either way, does a woman take a lover when she is happily married?”
“You are sure this went on after her marriage?” Solomon asked, while Constance went back to looking under drawers and rummaging in cupboards.
“Until her death, as far as I know,” Kellar replied.
“And you made it your business to know?” Solomon said.
“I felt responsible for her. I brought her here.”
“Then you were not,” Solomon said with deliberation, “one of her lovers?”
Kellar blinked. “Good God, no, she could be my daughter!”
“Is she?” Constance asked, straightening once more from the wardrobe.
“No.”
It might have been the truth. It might not. With Kellar, it was hard to tell.
Solomon wandered to the fireplace. In the middle of summer, it was empty and had clearly not been used for some weeks. However, a charred flake caught in the grate made him crouch down to look beneath. There were no coal ashes, just a little pile of what he was sure was burned paper.
“What is it?” Constance asked.
“Something was burned here recently. Letters, perhaps.”
Kellar strode toward him. “Perhaps Montague had found out about Darrow.”
“And perhaps she was just tidying her desk,” Solomon said. “She was clearly a tidy person. Did you find anything out of place, Constance?”
She shook her head. “I’ll ring for the maid.”
The maid appeared with unexpected speed, as though she had bolted upstairs. She was a statuesque woman with a stern, pale face and fierce eyes that were red-rimmed. Throwing open the door, she halted in her tracks to find so many people in the room.
Kellar addressed her kindly. “Webb, this is Mr. and Mrs. Grey, who are paying their last respects to your mistress. They have a few questions for you, since you were the last person to see her.”
“She never said she was ill,” Webb said. “She never looked ill. Even now, you’d think she were only sleeping.”
“She is at peace,” Constance said as the maid tore her eyes from Caterina’s dead face. “What is your name?”
“Mary Webb, ma’am.”
“And how long were you Mrs. Montague’s maid?”
“Since before she was married. Four years? Almost since she came to England.”
“Was she happy when you last saw her?” Constance asked.
“Oh yes, ma’am.” A frown marred Mary’s brow. “At least, she was happy, ebullient, like, when she came into the room. More thoughtful while we got her ready for bed. Expect she was tired. She is, after a performance.”
“I can imagine. Did she confide her thoughts to you?”
“No. And I didn’t ask. I knew she would tell me if she wanted me to do anything for her. But she just lay down and went to sleep.”
“Like that?” Solomon asked, indicating the bed. Mary looked, frowned again, and shook her head emphatically.
“Not quite like that. She never slept with her pillows like that.”
Constance took a step nearer her. “Didn’t she? You know that because you arranged them for her?”
“Every night,” Mary said.
“Including last night?” Solomon said, and the maid nodded. “How were they usually arranged?
“Well, she often liked to read for a little before she went to sleep. And then, in the morning, to pull herself easy into a comfortable sitting position for a cup of tea in bed. So she had two pillows propped up and crossed behind her like this…” Reaching over the body, Mary all but snatched up the spare pillows to demonstrate how they were stood up on their ends and crossed.
“Then she slept flat with her head on one pillow.”
“When you found her this morning,” Constance said, “were her pillows arranged in the usual way? Or as they are now?”
“As they are now,” the maid replied promptly. “She was lying like that, too, with the bed barely disturbed.”
Which was surely interesting…
“Her preferred arrangement only uses up three pillows,” Solomon pointed out. “What did she do with the fourth?”
Mary blushed. “That was in case the master visited,” she said primly.
“Did he visit her last night?” Constance asked.
Mary’s nostrils flared with distaste. “I could not say, ma’am.” Then, almost immediately correcting herself, she said, “No, he didn’t, for her door were locked this morning when I brought her tea.”
Solomon’s breath caught. His gaze found Constance’s. “Then how did you get into the room?”
Mary produced a key from her apron pocket.
“Was it usual for her to lock her door?” Kellar asked.